Ibsen, Henrik

The Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen was born the son of a merchant in the small town of Skien. When he was eight years old, his father's business went bankrupt, and his family then was excluded from the wealthy, bourgeois circles it previously had been part of. Due to his family's bad economic conditions, Ibsen's education got neglected. During his apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Grimstad in 1843-50, he studied in his free time and obtained a degree as an extra-mural student. He familiarized himself with both political and cultural issues through the European and Scandinavian press. After getting his first drama published (under the pseudonym Brynjolf Bjarme) and a one-acter presented at the Kristiania Theatre, he was employed as a playwright in 1851 at the newly established Norwegian theatre in Bergen. There he remained until 1857, when he took charge of the Norwegian Theatre (Det norske Theater) in Kristiania (present-day Oslo). In 1864, he left Norway and lived abroad, first in Italy and next in Dresden and Munich, for almost 30 years. He returned to Kristiania in 1891.