Elizabeth Subercaseaux Elizabeth Subercaseaux Elizabeth Subercaseaux Sommerhoff (born 1945) is a Chilean journalist and writer. Elizabeth Subercaseaux grew up near Cauqenes, Chile at her grandparents' home called Santa Clara. Subercaseaux's father died in 1956, when he was 42 years old and she was 11. The five children of the marriage – Bernardo and Juan, older than Elizabeth, and Martin and Ximena, younger – were brought up by their mother, the sculptor, painter, and photographer Gerda Sommerhoff, who was born in Germany and grew up in Holland. She is the great-great-granddaughter of the German composer Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck. After finishing high
Friedrich Wieck days before the conference date, Wieck filed another appeal, an ugly, defamatory "declaration" to court objecting to the marriage, accusing Schumann of a litany of weaknesses and vices, especially habitual drunkenness and the inability to support a wife. Schumann "cannot speak coherently or write legibly," he is "lazy, unreliable, and conceited," "a mediocre composer whose music is unclear and almost impossible to perform," "incompetent, childish, unmanly, in short totally lost for any social adjustment." Some of the information he used was obtained by breaking into Clara's locked letter-box. The court did not issue a judgment for several months. Wieck took