Jakobsoni C.R.

(Carl Robert Jakobson, 1841-1882)

Writer, teacher and member of a group of successful Estonians known as ‘the Petersburg patriots’ who used their influence to better their compatriots’ lot. One of the important persons in Estonian national awakening. Depicted on the 500-krooni banknote where, interestingly, his beard improved with each printing (for information on Estonian currency, see Krooni). As a journalist, he contributed to Postimees but Jannsen disliked his anti-German, anti-clerical stance (the censor called him ‘the Robespierre of the Baltic’) and when Jakobson published his own newspaper in 1878, Sakala, a ‘War of Pens’ ensued. Jakobson’s funeral triggered a great demonstration of national feeling, despite dreadful weather and poor roads, more than 3500 people came to mourn their lost leader. Rumors spread that ‘Robespierre’ had been poisoned: a German doctor was accused but no guilt established. Prior to 1923, street known as Владимірская (Vladimirskaya) / Vladimiri in honor of an 1886 visit to Tallinn by Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, uncle of Tsar Nicholas II, replacing the previous, 19^th-C names of Слободская (Slobodskaya), Slobodi then the newer versions Uus-Slobodi or Neue Sloboden after the settlement initiated by Peter I and recorded as Uus Slobodaa (see Tobiase R.).