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
Robert Schumann at a concert given by Clara Wieck, who was then just 13 years old. On this occasion Clara played bravura Variations by Henri Herz, a composer whom Schumann was already deriding as a philistine. Schumann's mother said to Clara, "You must marry my Robert one day." The "Symphony in G minor" was not published during Schumann's lifetime, but has been played and recorded in recent times. The 1833 deaths of Schumann's brother Julius and his sister-in-law Rosalie in the worldwide cholera pandemic brought on a severe depressive episode. By spring 1834, Schumann had sufficiently recovered to inaugurate "Die Neue Zeitschrift