ABSTRACT
In 1740, 10-year-old Anton Bering wrote a letter to his 17-year-old brother, Jonas, whom he had not seen for almost nine years.1 Anton had left Reval (modern-day Tallin, the capital of Estonia) for Kamchatka (see Figure 11.1) in 1733, along with his father, Vitus Bering, his mother, Anna Christina, and his younger sister, Anoushka. With almost 8,500 km and nine years between them, one might assume that it would have been hard for Anton to entertain an emotional, vivid sibling relationship with his brother. Little Anton expresses his specific concerns: ‘My very dear brother … the more I rely on your brotherly affection, the more I am rather puzzled by the fact that hitherto I have not been granted the honour of receiving a single line written by you.’ In the letter, Anton also surmises the reasons for the alienation he fears: ‘Might it be that the distance between us has enhanced you losing memory of me, your brother. This burden lies hard on me, brother, for which reason I inquire herewith after your health and wellbeing.’2 With hardly any memory of his own, Jonas must have been an
1 There is no history of emotion without emotions. This chapter has been highly inspired by the many conversations I had with Philippa Maddern in Perth, in Berlin, in Philadelphia, in Kassel, and in Melbourne since 2009 when I first met her at The University of Western Australia. She taught me to trust my own emotions in regard to historical sources as well as the emotions of those women, children, and men I came across in the sources. I am deeply grateful for this lesson and many more.
