Knud Plesner Ibsen 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 WildDuck, but also Daniel Hejre in The League of Youth. Once a rich merchant in Skien with a lavish lifestyle, Knud Ibsen experienced economicdifficulties in the 1830s and 1840s, and gradually lost his fortune. Traditional Ibsen historiography has claimed that the experience made him an embittered and moody man, and that it profoundly influenced his son's work; recent Ibsen scholarship has questioned such assumptions. 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 captainHenrich 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 from Stege, Denmark. His father died at sea outside Hesnesøya near Grimstad in November 1797, and the following year, Johanne married ship's captain Ole Paus; in 1799 Ole Paus bought the estate Rising near Skien after selling the Ibsen house in downtown Skien, and the family moved to Rising in 1800. Knud Ibsen grew up at Rising with most of his half-siblings, among them the later lawyer and member of parliamentChristian Cornelius Paus and ship-owner and banker Christopher Blom Paus. One of his half-brothers, Henrik Johan Paus, grew up in the Skien home of their aunt, uncle and cousin Marichen Altenburg, Knud's later wife. On 1 December 1825 Knud married Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg, daughter of wealthy merchant Johan Andreas Altenburg and Hedevig Christine Paus ; they had known each other since childhood. Young Henrik left Skien never to return at 15, in 1844. He never saw his parents again after his breakthrough as a world-famous playwright, living mostly abroad for 27 years. Knud Ibsen was conscious and proud of his son's success, commenting that "when the Pauses are dead, they are dead, but my name will live on."
