Almost all the major taxpayers in the patrician class in Skien were tottering and falling around the time Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828. There is a marked difference between the social position before and after. In 1826 there were still three major taxpayers in Skien. Didrich von Cappelen jr. was at the top followed by twice Løvenskiold, Løvenskiold at Fossum and Eggert Løvenskiold at Holden ironworks, Ulefoss. Four years later, in 1830, Didrich von Cappelen jr. was dead. Eggert Løvenskiold had given up his business and moved to Copenhagen and Prime Minister Løvenskiold at Fossum was left alone, but his income was also below his previous level.
By 1830, most of the patricians in Skien had lost their fortunes – even the largest ones. A good example is Niels Aall at Søndre Brekke, who in 1830 had major financial problems, sold Søndre Brekke to his son, chamberlain Hans Aall, and moved himself to Ulefoss main estate.
By 1830, not only were all the members of the original noble family Adeler gone. The members of the new nobility, Løvenskiold, and the pretended one, von Cappelen, were also either gone or had been weakened. Their place had been filled by a new gentry with Christopher Hansen Blom as the leader, but they were at a level markedly lower than that which Cappelen and Løvenskiold had once had.
At the same time as the upper class was being reduced, there was also an exodus of the upper class. In the same way as the nobility, Adeler on Gimsøy and Løvenskiold on Fossum, the Cappelen family had also lived outside the city for two generations on Store Mæla and Adtzlev and Niels Aall had lived on Søndre Brekke. The immigrant from Bjåland in Lårdal, Hans Christophersen Blom (1744-1814), owned the Blom farm in Prinsens gate in Skien where he lived, but he also built Lagmannsgården or Gjerpen Lille – and his son Christopher Hansen Blom built the Frogner farm.
Because this was the time of subsistence farming. If you wanted to move over longer distances or transport something large and heavy, you had to have a horse and preferably someone to help you. If you wanted milk, eggs or vegetables, you had to produce it yourself. That is why there were not only gardens, but also a stable and barn in the backyards of the city – as was the case in Ibsen's farm in Løvestredet. If you didn't have room for this in your own backyard, you had to get a "breeding farm" outside the city. If you couldn't afford to have two farms or it became impractical to have two farms, one in the city and one in the country, the easiest solution was to move out of the city and build or buy a farm outside the city. And if you really wanted to show your power and wealth, you built large farms like Frogner, like Christopher Hansen Blom.
That's why when Henrik Ibsen was born in Stockmannsgården they had both a horse and a pig in the backyard. But Altenburggården didn't have a garden and therefore had to have a breeding farm in Aarhus.
When Knud Ibsen moved to the Altenburg estate, he lived up to the expectations and obligations that came with the estate. He had a hospitable house where they almost always had strangers staying overnight. He did this not because he was wasteful and could not manage money, but he did it because this was expected of him as a member of the patrician class.
It was also his son-in-law Knud Ibsen and not his son Ole Paus at Rising who took in Cornelius Paus' house in the last year of his life. It was with Knud Ibsen in Altenburghuset and not at Rising that other relatives from Kongsberg took in during market time or other occasions.
To run all this, he also needed a breeding farm. That's why he bought Erlands Venstøp. His neighbor Cudrio in Prinsens gate also had a neighboring farm at Venstøp. Similarly, the former neighbor of Stockmannsgården by the market square, pharmacist Mülertz, had a farm at Venstøb.
