Henrik Johan Ibsen 

(/ˈɪbsən/;[1] Norwegian: [ˈhɛ̀nrɪk ˈɪ̀psn̩]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a

Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen
is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his
time.[2] His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and
Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead
Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. Ibsen is the most frequently performed
dramatist in the world after Shakespeare,[3][4] and A Doll's House was the world's most performed
play in 2006.[5]
Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt has strong surreal elements.[6] After Peer
Gynt Ibsen abandoned verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were
considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict
morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later work examined the realities that lay behind the
facades, revealing much that was disquieting to a number of his contemporaries. He had a critical
eye and conducted a free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. In many critics'
estimates The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm are "vying with each other as rivals for the top place
among Ibsen's works";[7] Ibsen himself regarded Emperor and Galilean as his masterpiece.[8]
Ibsen is often ranked as one of the most distinguished playwrights in the European tradition,[9] and
is widely regarded as the foremost playwright of the nineteenth century.[9][10] He influenced other
playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James
Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, and Miroslav Krleža. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1902, 1903, and 1904.[11]
Ibsen wrote his plays in Danish (the common written language of Denmark and Norway during his
lifetime)[12] and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays
are set in Norway—often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up—Ibsen
lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive
years. Ibsen's dramas were informed by his own background in the merchant elite of Skien, and
he often modelled or named characters after family members. He was the father of Prime
Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Ibsen's dramas had a strong influence upon contemporary culture.

Henrik Johan Ibsen was born on 20 March 1828 in Stockmanngården into an affluent merchant
family in the prosperous port town of Skien in Bratsberg. He was the son of the merchant Knud
Plesner Ibsen (1797–1877) and Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg (1799–1869). Both parents'
belonged to the city's and county's elite; Ibsen's ancestors were primarily merchants and
shipowners in large cities, or members of the "aristocracy of officials" of Upper Telemark. Henrik
Ibsen later wrote that "my parents were members on both sides of the most respected families in
Skien" and that he was closely related to "just about all the patrician families who then dominated
the place and its surroundings."[13][14] He was baptised at home in the Lutheran state church—
membership of which was mandatory—on 28 March and the baptism was confirmed in Christian's
Church on 19 June.[15] When Ibsen was born, Skien had for centuries been one of Norway's most
important and internationally oriented cities, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports and early
industrialization that had made Norway the developed and prosperous part of Denmark-Norway.
[15]

A silhouette (ca. 1820) of the Altenburg/Paus family in Altenburggården, with Ibsen's mother (far right),
maternal grandparents (centre) and other relatives. It is the only existing portrait of either of Ibsen's parents.
His parents, though not closely related by blood, had been reared as social first cousins,
sometimes described as near-siblings in a social sense.[16] Knud Ibsen's father, ship's captain and
merchant Henrich Johan Ibsen (1765–1797), died at sea when he was newborn in 1797 and his
mother Johanne Plesner (1770–1847) married captain Ole Paus (1766–1855) the following year;
Knud grew up as a member of the Paus family. His stepfather Ole Paus was a descendant of the
"aristocracy of officials" in Upper Telemark; as a child Paus had been taken in by a relative, Skien
merchant Christopher Blom, and he had become a ship's captain and shipowner in Skien,
acquiring the burghership in 1788. Like Henrich Johan Ibsen before him Paus became the
brother-in-law of one of Norway's wealthiest men, Diderik von Cappelen, whose first wife Maria
Plesner was Johanne's sister. In 1799 Ole Paus sold the Ibsen House in Skien's Løvestrædet
(Lion's Street), which he had inherited from his wife's first husband, and bought the
estate Rising outside Skien from a sister of his brother-in-law von Cappelen. Knud grew up at
Rising with most of his many half-siblings, among them the later governor Christian Cornelius
Paus and the shipowner Christopher Blom Paus. In the 1801 census the Paus family of Rising
had seven servants.[15]

The roof and one of the windows of Altenburggården can be seen in the middle of the picture.
Altenburggården was Marichen Altenburg's childhood home, and Henrik Ibsen lived there aged 3–8

Venstøp outside Skien, originally the Ibsen family's summer house, where they lived permanently 1836–
1843. It was a reasonably large farm with large, representative buildings.

Marichen grew up in the large, stately Altenburggården building in central Skien as the daughter

of the wealthy merchant Johan Andreas Altenburg (1763–1824) and Hedevig Christine
Paus [no] (1763–1848), who was the sister of Knud's stepfather. Altenburg was a shipowner,
timber merchant and owned a liquor distillery at Lundetangen and a farm outside of town; after
his death in 1824 the widow Hedevig, Henrik's grandmother, took over the businesses. During
Henrik's childhood the families of Ole and Hedevig Paus were very close: Ole's oldest son,
Knud's half-brother Henrik Johan Paus was raised in Hedevig's home, and the children of the
Paus siblings, including Knud and Marichen, spent much of their childhood together. Older Ibsen
scholars have claimed that Henrik Ibsen was fascinated by his parents’ “strange, almost
incestuous marriage,” and he would treat the subject of incestuous relationships in several plays,
notably his masterpiece Rosmersholm.[17] On the other hand, Jørgen Haave points out that his
parents' close relationship wasn't that unusual among the Skien elite.[15]
In 1825 Henrik's father Knud acquired the burghership of Skien and established an independent
business as a timber and luxury goods merchant there with his younger brother Christopher Blom
Paus, then aged 15, as his apprentice. The two brothers moved into the Stockmanngården
building, where they rented a part of the building and lived with a maid. On the first floor the
brothers sold foreign wines and a variety of luxury items, while also engaging in wholesale export
of timber in cooperation with their first cousin Diderik von Cappelen (1795–1866). On 1 December
1825 Knud married his stepfather's niece Marichen, who then moved in with them. Henrik was
born there in 1828. In 1830 Marichen's mother Hedevig left Altenburggården and her properties
and business ventures to her son-in-law Knud, and the Ibsen family moved to Marichen's
childhood home in 1831. During the 1820s and 1830s Knud was a wealthy young merchant in
Skien, and he was the city's 16th largest taxpayer in 1833.[15]
In his unfinished biography From Skien to Rome Henrik Ibsen wrote about the Skien of his
childhood:
In my childhood, Skien was an extremely joyful and festive town, quite the opposite of what it
would later become. Many highly cultured, prosperous families at that time lived partly in the city
itself, partly on large farms in the area. Close or more remote kinship connected most of these
families amongst themselves, and balls, dinner parties, and musical soirées came one after
another in rapid succession both during winters and summers. [...] Visits from strangers were
almost a constant occurrence at our spacious farmhouse and especially around Christmastime
and the market days, our townhouse was full and the table was set from morning to nightfall.

— Henrik Ibsen[18]
When Henrik Ibsen was around seven years old, his father's fortunes took a turn for the worse,
and in 1835 the family was forced to sell Altenburggården. The following year they moved to their
stately summer house, Venstøp [no], outside of the city.[19] They were still relatively affluent, had
servants and socialised with other members of the Skien elite, e.g. through lavish parties; their
closest neighbours on Southern Venstøp were former shipowner and mayor of Skien Ulrich
Frederik Cudrio and his family, who also had been forced to sell their townhouse.[15] In 1843, after
Henrik left home, the Ibsen family moved to a townhouse at Snipetorp, owned by Knud Ibsen's
half-brother and former apprentice Christopher, who had established himself as an independent
merchant in Skien in 1836 and who eventually become one of the city's leading shipowners.
[20]
 Knud continued to struggle to maintain his business and had some success in the 1840s, but in
the 1850s his business ventures and professional activities came to an end, and he became
reliant on the support from his successful younger half-brothers.[15]

Myths and reassessment[edit]

Older Ibsen historiography has often claimed that Knud Ibsen experienced financial ruin and
became an alcoholic tyrant, that the family lost contact with the elite it had belonged to, and that
this had a strong influence on Henrik Ibsen's biography and work. Newer Ibsen scholarship, in
particular Jørgen Haave's book Familien Ibsen [The Ibsen Family], has refuted such claims and
Haave has pointed out that older biographical works have uncritically repeated numerous
unfounded myths about both of Ibsen's parents, and about the playwright's childhood and
background in general.[15]
Haave points out that Knud Ibsen's economic problems in the 1830s were mainly the result of the
difficult times and something the Ibsen family had in common with most members of the
bourgeoisie; Haave further argues that Henrik Ibsen had a happy and comfortable childhood as a
member of the upper class, even after the family moved to Venstøp, and that they were able to
maintain their lifestyle and patrician identity with the help of their extended family and
accumulated cultural capital.[15] Contrary to the incorrect claims that Ibsen had been born in a
small or remote town, Haave points out that Skien had been Eastern Norway's leading
commercial city for centuries, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports and early industrialization
that had made Norway the developed and prosperous part of Denmark-Norway.[15]
Haave points out that virtually all of Ibsen's ancestors had been wealthy burghers and higher
government officials, and members of the local and regional elites in the areas they lived, often of
continental European ancestry. He argues that "the Ibsen family belonged to an elite that
distanced itself strongly from the common farmer population, and considered itself part of an
educated European culture" and that "it was this patrician class that formed his cultural identity
and upbringing."[21] Haave points to many examples of both Henrik Ibsen and other members of
his family having a condescending attitude towards common Norwegian farmers, viewing them as
"some sort of primitive indigenous population,"[15] and being very conscious of their own identity as
members of the sophisticated upper class; Haave describes Henrik as a boy who was pampered
by his father, who liked to be creative in solitude, and who provoked peers with his superiority and
arrogance.[15] Haave points out that the Ibsen family—Knud, Marichen and Henrik's siblings—
disintegrated financially and socially in the 1850s, but that it happened after Henrik had left home,
at a time when he was establishing himself as a successful man of theatre, while his extended
family, such as his uncles Paus, were firmly established in Skien's elite.[15] Haave argues that the
story of the Ibsen family is the story of the slow collapse of a patrician merchant family amid the
emergence of a new democratic society in the 19th century, and that Henrik Ibsen, like others of
his class, had to find new opportunities to maintain his social position.[15]

Literary influence of his childhood[edit]

Many Ibsen scholars have compared characters and themes in his plays to his family and
upbringing; his themes often deal with issues of financial difficulty as well as moral conflicts
stemming from dark secrets hidden from society. Ibsen himself confirmed that he both modelled
and named characters in his plays after his own family.[20][22] However, Haave criticizes the
uncritical use of Ibsen's dramas as biographical sources and the "naive" readings of them as
reflections of his family members.[15]

Early career[edit]
Grimstad years[edit]
At fifteen, Ibsen left school. He moved to the small town of Grimstad to become an
apprentice pharmacist. At that time he began writing plays. In 1846, when Ibsen was 18, he had a
liaison with Else Sophie Jensdatter Birkedalen which produced a son, Hans Jacob Hendrichsen
Birkdalen, whose upbringing Ibsen paid for until the boy was fourteen, though Ibsen never saw
Hans Jacob. Ibsen went to Christiania (later spelled Kristiania and then renamed Oslo) intending
to matriculate at the university. He soon rejected the idea (his earlier attempts at entering
university were blocked as he did not pass all his entrance exams), preferring to commit himself
to writing. His first play, the tragedy Catilina (1850), was published under the pseudonym "Brynjolf
Bjarme", when he was only 22, but it was not performed. His first play to be staged, The Burial
Mound (1850), received little attention. Still, Ibsen was determined to be a playwright, although
the numerous plays he wrote in the following years remained unsuccessful.[23] Ibsen's main
inspiration in the early period, right up to Peer Gynt, was apparently the Norwegian author Henrik
Wergeland and the Norwegian folk tales as collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen
Moe. In Ibsen's youth, Wergeland was the most acclaimed, and by far the most read, Norwegian
poet and playwright.

Ibsen as a theatre director[edit]

He spent the next several years employed at Det norske Theater (Bergen), where he was
involved in the production of more than 145 plays as a writer, director, and producer. During this
period, he published five new, though largely unremarkable, plays. Despite Ibsen's failure to
achieve success as a playwright, he gained a great deal of practical experience at the Norwegian
Theater, experience that was to prove valuable when he continued writing.
Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1858 to become the creative director of the Christiania Theatre.
He married Suzannah Thoresen on 18 June 1858 and she gave birth to their only child Sigurd on
23 December 1859. The couple lived in difficult financial circumstances and Ibsen became very
disenchanted with life in Norway.

Years in exile[edit]
One of the oldest photographs of Ibsen from ca. 1863/64, around the time he began writing Brand

Ibsen (far left) with friends in Rome, ca. 1867

In 1864, he left Christiania and went to Sorrento in Italy in self-imposed exile. He spent the next
27 years in Italy and Germany and would only visit Norway a few times.
His next play, Brand (1865), brought him the critical acclaim he sought, along with a measure of
financial success, as did the following play, Peer Gynt (1867), to which Edvard Grieg famously
composed incidental music and songs. Although Ibsen read excerpts of the Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and traces of the latter's influence are evident in Brand, it was not
until after Brand that Ibsen came to take Kierkegaard seriously. Initially annoyed with his friend
Georg Brandes for comparing Brand to Kierkegaard, Ibsen nevertheless read Either/Or and Fear
and Trembling. Ibsen's next play Peer Gynt was consciously informed by Kierkegaard.[24][25]
With success, Ibsen became more confident and began to introduce more and more of his own
beliefs and judgements into the drama, exploring what he termed the "drama of ideas". His next
series of plays are often considered his Golden Age, when he entered the height of his power
and influence, becoming the center of dramatic controversy across Europe.[citation needed]
Ibsen moved from Italy to Dresden, Germany, in 1868, where he spent years writing the play he
regarded as his main work, Emperor and Galilean (1873), dramatizing the life and times of the
Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. Although Ibsen himself always looked back on this play as
the cornerstone of his entire works, very few shared his opinion, and his next works would be
much more acclaimed. Ibsen moved to Munich in 1875 and began work on his first contemporary
realist drama The Pillars of Society, first published and performed in 1877.[26] A Doll's
House followed in 1879. This play is a scathing criticism of the marital roles accepted by men and
women which characterized Ibsen's society.
Ibsen was already in his fifties when A Doll’s House was published. He himself saw his latter
plays as a series. At the end of his career, he described them as “that series of dramas which
began with A Doll’s House and which is now completed with When We Dead Awaken”.
[27]
 Furthermore, it was the reception of A Doll’s House which brought Ibsen international acclaim.
Ghosts followed in 1881, another scathing commentary on the morality of Ibsen's society, in
which a widow reveals to her pastor that she had hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration.
The pastor had advised her to marry her fiancé despite his philandering, and she did so in the
belief that her love would reform him. But his philandering continued right up until his death, and
his vices are passed on to their son in the form of syphilis. The mention of venereal disease alone
was scandalous, but to show how it could poison a respectable family was considered intolerable.
[28]

In An Enemy of the People (1882), Ibsen went even further. In earlier plays, controversial
elements were important and even pivotal components of the action, but they were on the small
scale of individual households. In An Enemy, controversy became the primary focus, and the
antagonist was the entire community. One primary message of the play is that the individual, who
stands alone, is more often "right" than the mass of people, who are portrayed as ignorant and
sheeplike. Contemporary society's belief was that the community was a noble institution that
could be trusted, a notion Ibsen challenged. In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen chastised not only
the conservatism of society, but also the liberalism of the time. He illustrated how people on both
sides of the social spectrum could be equally self-serving. An Enemy of the People was written as
a response to the people who had rejected his previous work, Ghosts. The plot of the play is a
veiled look at the way people reacted to the plot of Ghosts. The protagonist is a physician in a
vacation spot whose primary draw is a public bath. The doctor discovers that the water is
contaminated by the local tannery. He expects to be acclaimed for saving the town from the
nightmare of infecting visitors with disease, but instead he is declared an 'enemy of the people' by
the locals, who band against him and even throw stones through his windows. The play ends with
his complete ostracism. It is obvious to the reader that disaster is in store for the town as well as
for the doctor.
As audiences by now expected, Ibsen's next play again attacked entrenched beliefs and
assumptions; but this time, his attack was not against society's mores, but against overeager
reformers and their idealism. Always an iconoclast, Ibsen saw himself as an objective observer of
society, “like a lone franc tireur in the outposts”, playing a lone hand, as he put it.[29] Ibsen,
perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, relied upon immediate sources such as
newspapers and second-hand report for his contact with intellectual thought. He claimed to be
ignorant of books, leaving them to his wife and son, but, as Georg Brandes described, “he
seemed to stand in some mysterious correspondence with the fermenting, germinating ideas of
the day.[30]
The Wild Duck (1884) is by many considered Ibsen's finest work, and it is certainly one of the
most complex, alongside Rosmersholm. It tells the story of Gregers Werle, a young man who
returns to his hometown after an extended exile and is reunited with his boyhood friend Hjalmar
Ekdal. Over the course of the play, the many secrets that lie behind the Ekdals' apparently happy
home are revealed to Gregers, who insists on pursuing the absolute truth, or the "Summons of
the Ideal". Among these truths: Gregers' father impregnated his servant Gina, then married her
off to Hjalmar to legitimize the child. Another man has been disgraced and imprisoned for a crime
the elder Werle committed. Furthermore, while Hjalmar spends his days working on a wholly
imaginary "invention", his wife is earning the household income.[citation needed]
Ibsen displays masterful use of irony: despite his dogmatic insistence on truth, Gregers never
says what he thinks but only insinuates, and is never understood until the play reaches its climax.
Gregers hammers away at Hjalmar through innuendo and coded phrases until he realizes the
truth; Gina's daughter, Hedvig, is not his child. Blinded by Gregers' insistence on absolute truth,
he disavows the child. Seeing the damage he has wrought, Gregers determines to repair things,
and suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the wild duck, her wounded pet, to prove her love for
Hjalmar. Hedvig, alone among the characters, recognizes that Gregers always speaks in code,
and looking for the deeper meaning in the first important statement Gregers makes which does
not contain one, kills herself rather than the duck in order to prove her love for him in the ultimate
act of self-sacrifice. Only too late do Hjalmar and Gregers realize that the absolute truth of the
"ideal" is sometimes too much for the human heart to bear.[citation needed]
Letter from Ibsen to his English reviewer and translator Edmund Gosse: "30.8.[18]99. Dear Mr. Edmund
Gosse! It was to me a hearty joy to receive your letter. So I will finally personally meet you and your wife. I
am at home every day in the morning until 1 o'clock. I am happy and surprised at your excellent Norwegian!
Your amicably obliged Henrik Ibsen."

Late in his career, Ibsen turned to a more introspective drama that had much less to do with
denunciations of society's moral values and more to do with the problems of individuals. In such
later plays as Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder (1892), Ibsen explored psychological
conflicts that transcended a simple rejection of current conventions. Many modern readers, who
might regard anti-Victorian didacticism as dated, simplistic or hackneyed, have found these later
works to be of absorbing interest for their hard-edged, objective consideration of interpersonal
confrontation. Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House are regularly cited as Ibsen's most popular and
influential plays,[31] with the title role of Hedda regarded as one of the most challenging and
rewarding for an actress even in the present day.
Ibsen had completely rewritten the rules of drama with a realism which was to be adopted
by Chekhov and others and which we see in the theatre to this day. From Ibsen forward,
challenging assumptions and directly speaking about issues has been considered one of the
factors that makes a play art rather than entertainment[citation needed]. His works were brought to an
English-speaking audience, largely thanks to the efforts of William Archer and Edmund Gosse.
These in turn had a profound influence on the young James Joyce who venerates him in his early
autobiographical novel "Stephen Hero". Ibsen returned to Norway in 1891, but it was in many
ways not the Norway he had left. Indeed, he had played a major role in the changes that had
happened across society. Modernism was on the rise, not only in the theatre, but across public
life.[citation needed]. Michael Meyer's translations in the 1950s were welcomed by actors and directors as
playable, rather than academic. As The Times newspaper put it, ‘This, one may think, is how
Ibsen might have expressed himself in English'.
Ibsen intentionally obscured his influences. However, asked later what he had read when he
wrote Catiline, Ibsen replied that he had read only the Danish Norse saga-
inspired Romantic tragedian Adam Oehlenschläger and Ludvig Holberg, "the Scandinavian
Molière".[32]

Critical reception[edit]
Ibsen caricatured by SNAPP for Vanity Fair, 1901

At the time when Ibsen was writing, literature was emerging as a formidable force in 19th century
society.[33] With the vast increase in literacy towards the end of the century, the possibilities of
literature being used for subversion struck horror into the heart of the Establishment. Ibsen's
plays, from A Doll’s House onwards, caused an uproar: not just in Norway, but throughout
Europe, and even across the Atlantic in America. No other artist, apart from Richard Wagner, had
such an effect internationally, inspiring almost blasphemous adoration and hysterical abuse.[34]
After the publication of Ghosts, he wrote: “while the storm lasted, I have made many studies and
observations and I shall not hesitate to exploit them in my future writings.”[35] Indeed, his next
play An Enemy of the People was initially regard by the critics to be simply his response to the
violent criticism which had greeted Ghosts. Ibsen expected criticism: as he wrote to his publisher:
“Ghosts will probably cause alarm in some circles, but it can’t be helped. If it did not, there would
have been no necessity for me to have written it.”[36]
Ibsen didn't just read the critical reaction to his plays, he actively corresponded with critics,
publishers, theatre directors and newspaper editors on the subject. The interpretation of his work,
both by critics and directors, concerned him greatly. He often advised directors on which actor or
actress would be suitable for a particular role. [An example of this is a letter he wrote to Hans
Schroder in November 1884, with detailed instructions for the production of The Wild Duck.[37]]
Ibsen's plays initially reached a far wider audience as read plays rather than in performance. It
was 20 years, for instance, before the authorities would allow Ghosts to be performed in Norway.
Each new play that Ibsen wrote, from 1879 onwards, had an explosive effect on intellectual
circles. This was greatest for A Doll’s House and Ghosts, and it did lessen with the later plays, but
the translation of Ibsen's works into German, French and English during the decade following the
initial publication of each play and frequent new productions as and when permission was
granted, meant that Ibsen remained a topic of lively conversation throughout the latter decades of
the 19th century. When A Doll’s House was published, it had an explosive effect: it was the centre
of every conversation at every social gathering in Christiania. One hostess even wrote on the
invitations to her soirée, “You are politely requested not to mention Mr Ibsen’s new play”.[38]

Death[edit]
Ibsen, late in his career

On 23 May 1906, Ibsen died in his home at Arbins gade 1 in Kristiania (now Oslo)[39] after a series
of strokes in March 1900. When, on 22 May, his nurse assured a visitor that he was a little better,
Ibsen spluttered his last words "On the contrary" ("Tvertimod!"). He died the following day at
2:30 pm.[40]
Ibsen was buried in Vår Frelsers gravlund ("The Graveyard of Our Savior") in central Oslo.

Centenary[edit]
The 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006 was commemorated with an "Ibsen year" in
Norway and other countries.[41][42][43] In 2006, the homebuilding company Selvaag also opened Peer
Gynt Sculpture Park in Oslo, Norway, in Henrik Ibsen's honour, making it possible to follow the
dramatic play Peer Gynt scene by scene. Will Eno's adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, titled Gnit,
had its world premiere at the 37th Humana Festival of New American Plays in March 2013.[44]
On 23 May 2006, The Ibsen Museum in Oslo re-opened, to the public, the house where Ibsen
had spent his last eleven years, completely restored with the original interior, colours, and decor.
[45]

Legacy[edit]

Plaque to Ibsen, Oslo marking his home from 1895-1906

Ivo de Figueiredo argues that "today, Ibsen belongs to the world. But it is impossible to
understand [Ibsen's] path out there without knowing the Danish cultural sphere from which he
sprang, from which he liberated himself and which he ended up shaping. Ibsen developed as a
person and artist in a dialogue with Danish theater and literature that was anything but smooth."[46]
The social questions which concerned Ibsen belonged unequivocally to the 19th century. From a
modern perspective, the aspects of his writing that appeal most are the psychological issues
which he explored. The social issues, taken up so prominently in his own day, have become
dated, as has the late-Victorian middle-class setting of his plays. The fact that, whether read and
staged, they still possess a compelling power is testament to his enduring quality as a thinker and
a dramatist.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ibsen's death in 2006, the Norwegian government
organised the Ibsen Year, which included celebrations around the world. The NRK produced a
miniseries on Ibsen's childhood and youth in 2006, An Immortal Man. Several prizes are awarded
in the name of Henrik Ibsen, among them the International Ibsen Award, the Norwegian Ibsen
Award and the Ibsen Centennial Commemoration Award.
Every year, since 2008, the annual "Delhi Ibsen Festival", is held in Delhi, India, organized by the
Dramatic Art and Design Academy (DADA) in collaboration with The Royal Norwegian Embassy
in India. It features plays by Ibsen, performed by artists from various parts of the world in varied
languages and styles.[47][48]
The Ibsen Society of America (ISA) was founded in 1978 at the close of the Ibsen
Sesquicentennial Symposium held in New York City to mark the 150th anniversary of Henrik
Ibsen's birth. Distinguished Ibsen translator and critic Rolf Fjelde, Professor of Literature at Pratt
Institute and the chief organizer of the Symposium, was elected Founding President. In
December 1979, the ISA was certified as a non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of
New York. Its purpose is to foster through lectures, readings, performances, conferences, and
publications an understanding of Ibsen's works as they are interpreted as texts and produced on
stage and in film and other media. An annual newsletter Ibsen News and Comment is distributed
to all members.[49]

Ancestry[edit]

Monogram of Henrik Ibsen

Ibsen's ancestry has been a much studied subject, due to his perceived foreignness[50] and due to
the influence of his biography and family on his plays. Ibsen often made references to his family
in his plays, sometimes by name, or by modelling characters after them.
The oldest documented member of the Ibsen family was ship's captain Rasmus Ibsen (1632–
1703) from Stege, Denmark. His son, ship's captain Peder Ibsen became a burgher of Bergen in
Norway in 1726.[51] Henrik Ibsen had Danish, German, Norwegian and some distant Scottish
ancestry. Most of his ancestors belonged to the merchant class of original Danish and German
extraction, and many of his ancestors were ship's captains.
Ibsen's biographer Henrik Jæger famously wrote in 1888 that Ibsen did not have a drop of
Norwegian blood in his veins, stating that "the ancestral Ibsen was a Dane". This, however, is not
completely accurate; notably through his grandmother Hedevig Paus, Ibsen was descended from
one of the very few families of the patrician class of original Norwegian extraction, known since
the 15th century. Ibsen's ancestors had mostly lived in Norway for several generations, even
though many had foreign ancestry.[52][53]
The name Ibsen is originally a patronymic, meaning "son of Ib" (Ib is a Danish variant of Jacob).
The patronymic became "frozen", i.e. it became a permanent family name, in the 17th century.
The phenomenon of patronymics becoming frozen started in the 17th century in bourgeois
families in Denmark, and the practice was only widely adopted in Norway from around 1900.

Descendants[edit]
From his marriage with Suzannah Thoresen, Ibsen had one son, lawyer, government minister,
and Norwegian Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen. Sigurd Ibsen married Bergljot Bjørnson, the
daughter of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Their son was Tancred Ibsen, who became a film director and
was married to Lillebil Ibsen; their only child was diplomat Tancred Ibsen, Jr. Sigurd Ibsen's
daughter, Irene Ibsen, married Josias Bille, a member of the Danish ancient noble Bille family;
their son was Danish actor Joen Bille.

Honours[edit]
Ibsen was decorated Knight in 1873, Commander in 1892, and with the Grand Cross of the Order
of St. Olav in 1893. He received the Grand Cross of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, and the
Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, and was Knight, First Class of the Order of
Vasa.[54]
Well known stage directors in Austria and Germany as Theodor Lobe (1833–1905), Paul
Barnay (1884–1960), Max Burckhard (1854–1912), Otto Brahm (1956–1912), Carl Heine (1861–
1927), Paul Albert Glaeser-Wilken (1874–1942), Victor Barnowsky (1875–1952), Eugen
Robert (1877–1944), Leopold Jessner (1878–1945), Ludwig Barnay (1884–1960), Alfred
Rotter (1886–1933), Fritz Rotter (1888–1939), Paul Rose [de] (1900–1973) and Peter
Zadek (1926–2009) performed the work of Ibsen.
In 1995, the asteroid 5696 Ibsen was named in his memory.