Knud Ibsen

Knud Plesner Ibsen (3 October 1797, in Skien – 24 October 1877, in Skien) was the father of playwright Henrik Ibsen, and is widely considered the model for many central characters in his son's plays, including most famously Jon Gynt in Peer Gynt and Old Ekdahl in The Wild Duck, but also Daniel Hejre in The League of Youth.

Once a rich merchant in Skien with a lavish lifestyle, Knud Ibsen went bankrupt, an experience which made him an embittered and moody man, and which profoundly influenced his son's work. Knud Ibsen had, like the character Old Ekdahl, also been a lieutenant and a huntsman in his youth.

Knud Ibsen was the son of ship's captain Henrich Ibsen and Johanne Plesner; his paternal great-grandfather had immigrated from Denmark to Norway in 1726; the family's earliest known ancestor was Rasmus Ibsen (1632–1703) from Stege, Denmark (cf. Rasmus Gynt in Peer Gynt). His father died at sea in 1797, and the following year, Johanne married Ole Paus, a ship-owner, and he grew up on the Paus family estate Rising. He was the elder half-brother of lawyer and member of parliament Christian Cornelius Paus and ship-owner and banker Christopher Blom Paus. He married Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg, daughter of wealthy merchant Johan Andreas Altenburg and Hedvig Paus (the sister of his step-father); they had known each other since childhood.

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen (/ˈɪbsən/;Norwegian: [ˈhɛnɾɪk ˈɪpsən]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. 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, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House became the world's most performed play by the early 20th century.

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 many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. The poetic and cinematic early play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements.

Peer Gynt

Peer Gynt (/ˈpɪər ˈɡɪnt/; Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈpæːr ˈjʏnt]) is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Written in the Bokmål form of Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed Per Gynt, the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modelled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845 (Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn).

According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones".Peer Gynt has also been described as the story of a life based on procrastination and avoidance. A first edition of 1,250 copies was published on 14 November 1867 in Copenhagen. Although the first edition swiftly sold out, a reprint of two thousand copies, which followed after only fourteen days, didn't sell out until seven years later.

Herman Bang

Herman Joachim Bang (20 April 1857 – 29 January 1912) was a Danish author, one of the men of the Modern Breakthrough.

Biography

Bang was born in Asserballe, on the small Danish island of Als, the son of a South Jutlandic vicar (a relative of N. F. S. Grundtvig). His family history was marked by insanity and disease. His paternal grandfather at times functioned as a father figure and impressed his grandson with stories of their alleged family ties to the historical Hvide clan.

When he was twenty he published two volumes of critical essays on the realistic movement. In 1880 he published his novel Haabløse Slægter (Families Without Hope), which aroused immediate attention. The main character was a young man who had a relationship with an older woman. The book was considered obscene at the time and was banned. After some time spent in travel and a successful lecture tour of Norway and Sweden, he settled in Copenhagen and produced a series of novels and collections of short stories which placed him in the front rank of Scandinavian novelists. Among his more famous stories are Fædra (1883) and Tine (Tina, 1889).