Alice Sommerlath

In this Portuguese name, the first or maternal family name is Soares and the second or paternal family name is Toledo.

Alice de Toledo Sommerlath (née Alice Soares de Toledo; 25 May 1906 – 9 March 1997) was the mother of Queen Silvia, wife of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

Alice Sommerlath
Born	Alice Soares de Toledo (1906-05-25)25 May 1906 São Manuel, São Paulo, Brazil
Died	9 March 1997(1997-03-09) (aged 90) Drottningholm Palace, Ekerö, Sweden
Spouse	Walther Sommerlath ​ ​ (m. 1925; died 1990)​
Children	Ralf Sommerlath Walther Ludwig Sommerlath Hans Jörg Sommerlath Silvia, Queen of Sweden

Grave of Walther, Alice and Jörg Sommerlath

Early life

Sommerlath was born in the municipality of São Manuel in the Brazilian state of São Paulo.^[1] She was the youngest child and only daughter of Elisa Novais Soares (1881–1928) and her husband Arthur Floriano de Toledo (1873–1935).

Marriage and later life

Alice Soares de Toledo married German entrepreneur Walther Sommerlath (1901–1990) on 10 December 1925 at Santa Cecília, São Paulo, eventually moving to Germany with him. There, the couple had four children:

• Ralf Sommerlath (born 26 November 1929)
• Walther Ludwig Sommerlath (1934–2020)
• Hans Jörg Sommerlath (1941–2006)
• Silvia Renate Sommerlath (born 23 December 1943), married in 1976 to King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden

From 1937 through 1947, they lived in Berlin.^[2]

From 1947 to 1957, the family lived in São Paulo, where Sommerlath's husband held positions such as president of the Brazilian subsidiary of Swedish company Uddeholm AB.^[3] In 1957, the Sommerlaths returned to Heidelberg.

Sommerlath was widowed in October 1990. She suffered from heart disease and senile dementia^[3] and died at Drottningholm Palace, west of Stockholm, in 1997.^[3] Her remains were buried in Heidelberg beside her husband's.^[3]