Le Coq A. (Albert Le Coq, dates unknown)
Not a street: A. Le Coq Arena or Lilleküla Stadium, after a certain Belgian, Albert Le Coq, of very misty history... Said to be descended from French Huguenots fleeing France in the 17th century, yet reported too to have set up shop in London and be marketing his family’s wine, as well as both brewer of his own and bottler / distributor of other brewers’ beers, around the turn of the 18th C. At the same time(ish) (1807) there was an A. Le Coq & Co. trading liquors in Prussia... Prussia, however, in 1807, had other more pressing matters to attend to: Napoleon. The Battle of Jena was lost on 14th October 1806 and two years later Hamelin fell without a shot. Interestingly, the officer responsible for surrendering the town was Karl Ludwig von Lecoq / Le Coq (1754-1829), who was of French Huguenot extraction, and later cashiered and imprisoned for conceding what was considered to be one of the most shameful capitulations in military history. It could be purely coincidental, and the 1807 date does seem to have an air of convenient priority (as well as copy and paste) about it, but if you run a business and all of a sudden a namesake of yours, be it father (he did have four children, including two boys, probably around 1780-1790, so the dates match) or even fortuitous, comes to symbolize the epitome of disgrace, moving abroad may not seem a bad idea, all the more so if maintaining a degree of commercial relations with, or knowledge of, clients far enough away (Russia, perhaps?) to be unaware of the precise details of miscellaneous Napoleonic débâcles were included in the package. Donning a very neutral nationality, Belgian, seems natural too, as well as good commercial sense. Much later, in 1851, a Prussian (not Belgian) Albert Louis John Le Coq applied for or obtained British naturalization*. And, incidentally, in the early 20th C, another Albert von Le Coq, German this time, was one of the earlier co-finders of the Tarim mummies in China. But I digress, back to beer. Various rumors revolve around Peter the Great and Catherine the Great both developing a taste for stout porter, apparently first brewed in London by the Anchor Brewery of Ralph Thrale (1698-1758) and which, since it didn’t travel well, he built into a stronger version which later became known as Russian Imperial Stout. This was the beer that A. Le Coq became famous for marketing to Russia, so successfully in fact that copycat versions on the one hand and an invitation from the Tsar on the other found the company moving to St. Petersburg in 1904, and from there, through M&As, revolution and restitution to the booze we burp today.
* Apologies for extensive guesswork...
