Marichen Altenburg

A silhouette of the family in Altenburggården (ca. 1820). Marichen to the far right, her parents in the centre. It is the only existing portrait of her. Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg (24 April 1799 – 3 June 1869) was the mother of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and is known as the model for several characters in some of Ibsen's most famous plays, including Åse in Peer Gynt. Through the Paus family—the family of Marichen's mother Hedevig and Knud's stepfather Ole Paus—Marichen was raised as a close relative of her would-be husband Knud Ibsen, although they were not closely related biologically.

Early life

Marichen Altenburg was born in Skien as the daughter of the merchant Johan Andreas Altenburg (1763–1824) and Hedevig Christine Paus (1763–1848). Her father was a shipowner, timber merchant and owned a liquor distillery at Lundetangen and a farm outside of town; her mother had been born in Upper Telemark to a family that belonged to the regional elite there, the "aristocracy of officials". She grew up in the stately Altenburg house in central Skien. By 1830 her mother has transferred the Altenburg house and her business ventures to Knud, who was Skien's 16th largest taxpayer by 1833.

Influence on Ibsen's work Henrik Ibsen confirmed on several occasions that he both modelled and named characters in his plays after his own family. In a letter to Georg Brandes, Ibsen wrote that his own family and childhood had served "as some kind of model" for the Gynt family in Peer Gynt, and in a letter to Peter Hansen, Ibsen confirmed that the character Åse, Peer Gynt's mother, was based on his own mother, "with the necessary exaggerations". Ferguson argues that Marichen also served as the model for Inga of Varteig in The Pretenders.

In film and theatre Marichen Altenburg was portrayed by Kjersti Holmen in the 2006 NRK mini series En udødelig mann (Indomitable one).

She was portrayed by Cecilie Graasvold in Ibsensafari.