Sõjakooli (Sõjakool)

Military school, academy. After the military barracks established in Tondi in the early 20^th C under Nicholas II to house the personnel of his Merekindlus, or Naval Fortress. Used as barracks by the Imperial German army in 1918, by the Soviet army during the Soviet occupation, as Defense Forces Academy from 1920-1940 after its removal from the former railway technical school in Tehnika. Part of the Tondi military school group, see Talli.

Sõjamäe (Sõjamägi)

Tricky, literally War Hill, its meaning could range from Soldiers’ Knoll, Martial Mountain, Battle Bump, to Bruise. Military vantage point / observation post sounds good too (see Mäe for discussion). Most faithful, however, is Battle Hill, named after what is believed to be the site of a battle following the Jüriöö Ülestõus (St. George’s Night Uprising) of 1343-04-23 where the Teutonic Order killed some 3000 Estonians in an orgy of attrition and revenge (see Lasnamäe). Streets today come in all sizes: Väike-Sõjamäe, Kesk-Sõjamäe and Suur-Sõjamäe, formerly V-, K & S-Weimarschofi after manor house belonging to master butcher Johann Weymar (1815), but native Estonians long preferred the Sõjamäe variants or even, according to TT, in the 18^th C, Tapomäe, where Tapo seems to come from tapp:tapa, slaughter or murder. To trivialize the uprising, the German overlords renamed or nicknamed Sõjamäe as Seamäe (Pig Hill), Schweinsberg in German, sometime in the 19^th C. The name can still be seen on the 1914 map of Tallinn accompanying Baedeker’s Russia, with Teheran, Port Arthur, and Peking; handbook for travellers. Sure, that worked…

• Sõjamäe
• Jüriöö
• Military
• Mõis
• Mägi
• Asum (Sub-district)