TALLINNA LINNA POEGLASTE KAUBANDUSKOOL - COMMERCIALCOLLEGE

TALLINN CITY BOY'S COMMERCIAL COLLEGE 
aka Talinna Linna Poeglaste Kaubanduskool
Present name Sakala Eragümnaasium aka Sakala Private Highschool
Located at 21 Sakala Street, Tallinn, Estonia 

See pages 31-32 of the Book

Extract from my article " The Second Edition"

At the launch of my book Eyewitness: Estonia 1909–1949 in 2008, an old Estonian gentleman approached me. With a perplexed look on his face he showed me a picture of a building in the book, saying that it was actually a picture of the girls’ school, whereas the caption described it as the 'Tallinn City Boys Commercial College’1. Earlier on, while I’d been writing the book, my cousin in Estonia had sent me a photograph of the school which she’d taken off a website. I couldn’t use that photo due to copyright so, in response to my request, she had taken a new photo of the same building on Pärnu Maantee which she then sent to me.

In Australia I had already become aware of the existence of this booklet, titled 25 Years – The History of the Tallinn City Boys Commercial College. So I telephoned and ordered it from Raamatukoi, a second-hand bookshop in Tallinn specialising in second-hand books, pamphlets, magazines and other assorted printed matter. Much of their material is bought from families and deceased estates who are disposing of their private book collections and personal items. Although the title was listed, the man I spoke to said that he would have to check first to confirm that it was still available. A couple of days later, there was a telephone call advising me to collect it.
Because the booklet was old, it was handed to me in a clear plastic bag. I took it out from the bag and examined it carefully, checking to see that all the pages were in sequential order. From a quick glance over the booklet, I saw there were photographs of the Tallinn City Boys Commercial College building as well as a list of graduates at the end of the book. When I arrived home, I put it on a pile of similar items so that I could examine it at a more convenient time.


 At the time I used to breakfast at the Reval Cafe, which is located on the corner of Pärnu Maantee and Sakala Street. After that, I would walk a short distance up Sakala Street to a copy shop that printed my business cards, invoices and other assorted paraphernalia to enable me to market my book. For over a month I kept to the same routine.






I think that it was one day in October, as I was standing on the street after a late breakfast enjoying the sunshine and the sense of the moment in Sakala Street, that my gaze rested on an old building across the road and for some strange reason, perhaps because of a nagging memory, my curiosity got the better of me. So I crossed the road, and peering through the wrought-iron fence at the old wall plaques, I read the signs on the side of the building. You can imagine my surprise at finding the Tallinn Boys Commercial College building still standing and intact.













 
My astonishment was immense, largely because of the hours that I had spent poring over old maps of Tallinn, trying to trace out the route of the highway to find my father's secondary school. 

This was made difficult by the changes to Tallinn during the Russian occupation, the ongoing reconstruction of Tallinn and the destruction of heritage-listed buildings in Sakala Street, the subject of corruption scandals that were reported daily in the newspapers.











I decided to walk back across the road to look at the building from a little further away. I stepped past the parked cars, and having dodged in and out of the traffic, was standing on the roadway in a passing traffic lane. This almost resulted in my being run over by a BMW driven by a member of the new elite.



 




 I recall that the driver, who had his driver’s side window open, stopped the car and looked at me in amazement. I said to him, “That is my father's school. The school he went to in 1924!” The driver laughed and said to me in Estonian, “Wonderful, I can see you are a double lucky person, lucky that I saw you in time as I was blinded by the sun and lucky to discover this school.” He congratulated me again on finding my father's school and wished me well as he sped off.

When I returned home, a short way from that building at number 19 Sakala Street, the first thing I did was to open the small book to confirm my discovery. The caption under the photo of the school stated that the school was at 19a Sakala Street. When I spoke to my relatives about the events of that afternoon in the sunshine, they told me that since 1924 there had been many changes to the roads in Tallinn. Even they did not know that Sakala Street had previously been named Vana Pärnu Maantee. 


Over the next few sunny autumn days which followed this discovery, I took many pictures of that stark old building, one of which is included in the second edition of my book, thereby making it historically accurate. So a mystery was revealed, and perhaps my confirmation of the change of the road from Vana Pärnu Maantee to Sakala Street adds a little more to the history of Tallinn, the ancient capital of Estonia. It is a wonderful experience to unravel a mystery and to establish a precise history of the events, as well as to enhance the authenticity of my father's story.

 



But this wasn’t all. As I mentioned earlier I even discovered, near the end of the book, a list of graduates from the years 1909 to 1933. Otto Johann Kiesel, the school Direktor, had listed the names of all the graduates and teachers, precisely spelt. I felt happy at the sight of my father's name, 'Voldemar Rattur' and also that of my uncle, 'Viktor Rattur'. Making corrections to the second edition, I felt that the benefit to readers, genealogists and scholars is that a precise, accurate spelling of a name tied to a specific date may help to unravel a vast amount of history. Readers will thank Otto Johann Kiesel for being an exemplary educator and teacher to whom we owe a profound debt.

The second edition is a better book for its historical authenticity. If some readers are aggrieved about the quality of the first edition, all I can say is that if the first edition had not appeared, the old Estonian gentleman would not have been able to make his comment to me and this writer would have been unaware of the aforementioned details. In as much as I can offer a 'mea culpa', I will state unequivocally that for the rest of my life, if I become aware of any new revelations, another edition will appear.

 

Although a year has passed since the publication of the book, I feel the most significant feature of the book is that it is the only book written in English of an eyewitness account of that period of Estonian history. Thus, in 2010, we are able to read the tale of a very ordinary man from a very tiny country, and the children and grandchildren of Estonians whose first language is English, can understand a little more about the people of Estonia and of their extraordinary exploits and history. A fitting end to this story for me would be to see the look of surprise on the face of the old Estonian gentleman when he reads this article in his newspaper and understands that I am sincerely grateful for his comment, “This is not a picture of the boys’ school”. Rex Urmas Rattur Sydney, January 2010

1. Tallinna Linna Poeglaste Kaubanduskool 






























National Issue
If you look at this photograph, taken in  2008, and at the one below, you will notice that the above sign has been removed. The sign relates to the time the school was operated by the Republic of Estonia. The removal is a desecration of one of our national symbols.




If you want to stop the descecration of our national heritage, you can demand that it is restored by writing to either Mart Laar, the Defense minister or to Jaak Aaviksoo, The Minister for Education. Or you can call on your national overseas organisations to lodge a protest with the President of Estonia, Mr President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.







Sakala Eragümnaasium aka Sakala Private Highschool in August 2011
By Ave Maria Mõistlik (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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RELATED LINKS

Eyewitness: Estonia 1909-1949 ISBN 978-0-9758008-0-5 
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