Hedevig Paus

Hedevig Christine Paus (29 October 1763 – 7 March 1848) was a Norwegian businesswoman and the grandmother of the playwright Henrik Ibsen.

[1][2][3] In 1794, she married the ship's captain Johan Andreas Altenburg, who early ceased sailing and settled down as a wealthy shipowner and merchant in Skien.

Johan Andreas Altenburg "owned properties valued between twenty and thirty thousand, including a large mansion, a spirits distillery at Lundetangen, which was the second largest in the county, as well as a farm in the countryside at Århus and two ships engaged in the timber trade.

The following year, their daughter Marichen Altenburg married Knud Ibsen, who was the stepson of Hedevig's brother Ole Paus.

The fortune enabled Knud Ibsen to establish himself as one of Skien's leading merchants in the late 1820s and early 1830s.

Hedevig Paus
A silhouette (ca. 1820) of the Altenburg/ Paus family in Altenburggården , with Hedevig Paus and her husband in the centre, their daughters to the right, and a nephew and niece who lived with them, Marichen Bomhoff and Henrik Johan Paus , to the left. The only known portrait of either of Ibsen's parents.