Paus family
The Paus family, also styled de Paus or von Paus, is a Norwegian family that emerged as an aristocratic priestly family from Medieval Oslo in the 16th century. For centuries, it belonged to the "aristocracy of officials," especially in the clergy and legal professions in Upper Telemark. Later generations entered shipping, steel, and banking, becoming steel magnates in Oslo. The family's best-known members are Henrik Ibsen and Ole Paus. The name is recorded in Oslo from the 14th century and likely derives from a metaphorical use of the Middle Low German word for pope—perhaps meaning "the pious one"—reflecting foreign influence and name satire in medieval Oslo.
The priest brothers Hans and Peder Povelsson Paus from Oslo have long been known as the family's earliest certain ancestors. In Slekten Paus, Finne-Grønn identified their grandfather as Hans Olufsson, a canon at St Mary's Church who held noble rank and served as a royal priest both before and after the Reformation. Peder Povelsson Paus came to Upper Telemark as parish priest of Vinje in 1618, became provost of Upper Telemark in 1633, and was the ancestor of the extant family; in the 17th century the family also used the name Vind after the parish of Vinje. From the 17th to the 19th century, the family were among the foremost of the regional elite, the "aristocracy of officials" in Upper Telemark, where family members served as priests, judges and other officials, often across generations. The family held the district judgeship—the region's chief governmental and judicial office—for 106 years. It was a meritocratic elite defined by education, priesthood, and service to the state, and the apex of the social order of Upper Telemark.
From the late 18th century, family members became ship's captains, shipowners, merchants and bankers in the port towns of Skien and Drammen. In the 19th century, family members became prominent steel industrialists in Christiania. The steel magnate Ole Paus had the Villa Paus built at Bygdøy and was the father of the adventurer and consul in Vienna Thorleif Paus, who became the father of General Ole Paus and the grandfather of the singer-songwriter Ole Paus. Other family members founded the industrial company Paus & Paus. Family members have also owned or co-owned several other major companies, including Norway's largest shipping company Wilh. Wilhelmsen. Since the early 20th century family members have owned half a dozen estates and castles in Sweden, of which Herresta is still owned by the family; this branch is descended from Leo Tolstoy. Christopher Paus, a papal chamberlain and heir to one of Norway’s largest timber companies, donated the Paus collection of classical sculpture to the National Gallery, and was made a count by Pope Pius XI in 1923. Pauspur, a village in India, was named after the family in the 19th century; Pauspur Church was built there. The family has used several seals and coats of arms, including a vigilant crane on Povel Paus’s 1661 Sovereignty Act seal and, later, a bull’s head with a golden star.
The family's best-known descendant is the playwright Henrik Ibsen, who immortalized them in his literature. Both of Ibsen's parents belonged to the family, either biologically or socially, and it was their closest kin group. Through the Paus family, Ibsen's parents were raised as "near-siblings." He named or modelled various characters after family members, and episodes and motifs in several of his dramas—notably Peer Gynt, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and Hedda Gabler—were inspired by Paus family traditions and events in the closely connected households of Ole Paus and Hedevig Paus in the early 19th century. The Paus family features prominently in Ibsen studies. According to Jon Nygaard, the rise of "the new puritanical civil servant state," marked by the ethos of "Upper Telemark, the Paus family," is a major theme in Ibsen’s work.
The name Paus in Oslo in the 14th and 15th centuries
The name Paus is known in Oslo in the 14th and 15th centuries and was used by individuals who belonged to the same small elite social class as the family that is documented from the 16th century. The farm Pausinn was one of the "city farms" that were part of medieval Oslo and is mentioned between 1324 and 1482, when it was owned by individuals who belonged to the city's elite. Paus is also used as the cognomen of several individuals in 14th and 15th century Oslo or its surroundings who appear to be related and who owned substantial property in nearby Nes. The most notable individual named Paus in medieval Oslo was Nikolas Sigurdsson Paus, who is mentioned as the Lawspeaker of Oslo in 1347, shortly before the Black Death reached the city. There were around a dozen lawspeakers in the entire kingdom, and they were part of the nobility. Two seals used by Nikolas Paus are included in the Encyclopedia of Noble Families in Denmark, Norway and the Duchies. Medieval historians P.A. Munch, Alexander Bugge and Edvard Bull argued that Pausinn was probably named after Nikolas Paus or a member of his family; on the basis of the Middle Saxon/Middle Dutch-sounding name, they argued that the family was of Low German/Dutch origin, and wrote that the Paus family was an influential immigrant family in medieval Oslo; the family may have immigrated as merchants in the 12th or 13th century from northern Germany or the Netherlands.Genealogist S.H. Finne-Grønn presumed that the younger family's name was derived from the name of Nikolas Paus and his family and from the city farm of Pausinn in one way or the other; only a century separates the last mention of Pausinn and the birth of the modern family's earliest certain ancestors who were known by the name. Oslo had a very small population in the time period, probably less than a thousand inhabitants in the years following the Black Death, and an even smaller elite, that family names were exceedingly rare in Norway both in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries and typically only used by nobles/clerics and merchants of an immigrant background, and that the name Paus is atypical of Norwegian. Genealogist C. S. Schilbred noted that "the connection between the older and the younger family of the name has not been established, but on the other hand no convincing arguments against such a possibility have been made." It is however a possibility that the family acquired the name indirectly, e.g. from Pausinn, rather than by direct descent. The modern family, believing itself to be related to the 14th century family, adopted an interpretation of Nikolas Paus' 1330 seal as its coat of arms in the late 19th century.
The family in the 16th century
According to genealogist S.H. Finne-Grønn, the family is most likely descended from Hans Olufsson, a canon at St Mary's Church, the royal chapel in Oslo. As indicated by his patronymic, Hans Olufsson's father was named Oluf. Due to his career as a member of the royal clergy, Hans Olufsson almost certainly had a privileged family background. Most canons in Norway at the time were recruited from the lower nobility, and normally studied at universities abroad, which was normally only possible with an affluent background. Hans Olufsson served as a canon at St Mary's Church and a member of its cathedral chapter until it was merged with that of Oslo Cathedral in 1545, following the Reformation. St Mary's Church was a powerful political institution as the seat of government of Norway at the time, as its provost was also the Chancellor of Norway with one of the canons serving as Vice-Chancellor. Its clergy held high aristocratic rank ex officio, as decreed by Haakon V of Norway in a 1300 royal proclamation, with canons holding the rank of Knight, and were granted significant privileges. Hans Olufsson held a prebend, the prebend of Saint Mary's altar sub lectorio, also known as the prebend of Dillevik, that included the income of 43 church properties in Eastern Norway. After 1545, Hans Olufsson served as a priest at Oslo Cathedral, but retained his prebend affiliated with the estate of St Mary's Church. He died on the night between 17 and 18 September 1570 and was buried in Oslo Cathedral on 19 September. Following his death, his prebend passed to Jens Nilssøn, the noted Oslo humanist and later Bishop of Oslo.Hans Olufsson's son, as documented by court proceedings from 1602, was Povel Hansson, who was a burgher and apparently a wealthy merchant in Oslo. He was according to Finne-Grønn most likely the father of the two clergymen who became the ancestors of two lineages of the family, and who have long been known as the family's earliest certain ancestors: Hans Povelsson Paus and Peder Povelsson Paus. Both brothers were born in Oslo in the late 16th century and clearly belonged to its social elite, evidenced by their extensive and costly education, their subsequent careers and their apparent social connections to prominent men of the church and nobility in Oslo in the early 17th century. As clergy of the Lutheran state church, they were also part of the clerical estate, which in absolutist Denmark-Norway was one of the two formally privileged estates of the realm, alongside the nobility.
Hans and Peder Povelsson Paus and their descendants
Hans Povelsson Paus was born in Oslo and entered the University of Copenhagen as a student under the name Johannes Paulli Asloensis around 1607–08. He earned the bachelor's degree in 1616, and shortly after became a chaplain at Oslo Cathedral. In 1622, he succeeded his presumed stepfather Anders Augustinusen as parish priest in Fredrikstad. He had a limited number of descendants, including his sons, Magister Povel Hansson Paus, parish priest in Lier, Bragernes, and Strømsø, and Anders Hansson Paus, parish priest in Jevnaker.File:Kvitseid old church.jpg|thumb|left|Old Kviteseid Church, built ca. 1260, where Peder Paus is buried under the choir floor
Hans' younger brother Peder Povelsson Paus was born in Oslo and entered the University of Copenhagen as a student under the name Petrus Paulli Asloensis. Following his studies, he served as headmaster of Skien Latin School around 1617, as parish priest in Vinje Church and as parish priest at Kviteseid Church and provost of Øvre Telemark prosti from 1633. He was married to Johanne Madsdatter. The tradition of Peder's great physical powers have been handed down in Kviteseid until the modern age. Peder was buried under the choir floor in the Old Kviteseid Church, where his son Povel placed a beautiful poem in Latin in memory of his father.
Peder's son Povel Pedersson Paus was parish priest in Hjartdal Church and married to Ingrid Corneliusdatter Trinepol, a daughter of timber merchant Cornelius Jansen Trinepol and a member of the wealthy patriciate of Skien who was notably descended from Jørgen von Ansbach. Povel Pedersson Paus was among the 87 representatives of the Norwegian clerical estate who signed the 1661 Sovereignty Act, Denmark-Norway's new constitution which introduced absolute and hereditary monarchy. Magnus Brostrup Landstad describes Povel Pedersson Paus as a learned and pious priest who held on to Catholic customs in post-Reformation Norway. Well versed in Latin, he wrote a Latin poem about his father and personally educated his children. Among his ten children were parish priest at the Old Kviteseid Church Hans Paus and district judge in Upper Telemark Cornelius Paus, from which two living main lines of the family are descended. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the office of district judge of Upper Telemark was effectively hereditary in the family for 106 consecutive years and four generations.