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 a German and grew up in Holland. She is the great-great-granddaughter of the German composer Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck.

After finishing high school in 1967, she traveled to Spain with her first husband, Carlos Eugenio Lavín, from whom she would be separated seven years later and with whom she had three children: Angelica, Alejandra, and Carlos Lavín Subercaseaux.