23 October 2025 press release

Lili Cassel-Wronker’s “London Diary” is an artfully illustrated journal in which Lili, who was 15 at the time, recorded her time in London in the winter of 1939/40. The original manuscript was donated to the German Exile Archive by Lili Cassel-Wronker in 2008, along with a collection of letters. The diary is published as a book for the first time by the Verlag Das kulturelle Gedächtnis publishing house in autumn 2025. The book launch event is taking place at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main on 28 October 2025.

Lili Cassel was born in Berlin in 1924. She initially emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1938, before moving to New York with her family in 1940. Lili Cassel studied art in Washington and New York and then went on to work for Time Magazine. Her first children’s book was published in 1947. In 1952 she met her future husband Erich Wronker in New York, whose grandfather Hermann Wronker was a co-founder of the Wronker department stores, including a store on Frankfurt am Main’s shopping street Zeil that was destroyed in a British air raid in 1944. Memorial blocks for Hermann Wronker and his wife Ida were laid at this location in 2017. The couple had been deported to Auschwitz in 1942, where they were murdered. Lili Cassel-Wronker worked as an illustrator and calligrapher well into her senior years, as well as teaching at an art academy. She died in Mount Holly in New Jersey in 2019.

The publisher describes the diary as an impressive and touching contemporary account: “She shares a lot about life in London during World War II through her descriptions and drawings. She drew, for example, the luminous white flowers that many people would attach to their clothing to avoid collisions at night, as the blackout intended as protection against air raids meant that any form of night-time traffic was rather dangerous. The barrage balloons that used to float above the city as an air-defence barrier against enemy aircraft and the entrances of air-raid shelters are also featured in her drawings. While the war is reflected in her illustrations in this way, she tends to describe happy events in her diary, such as a Christmas party, a wedding ceremony that was rather simple owing to the war, and a number of theatre performances she attended with her father and sister. Among these was Lady Precious Stream, which she described as “the loveliest theatre play in London”.

The German Exile Archive 1933–1945, the German National Library and the Verlag Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis publishing house are jointly hosting the book launch event at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main at 19:00 on 28 October 2025. The publisher Peter Graf and Dr Sylvia Asmus, the Director of the Exile Archive, will speak about the diary’s long journey from archive item to publication. The author Ursula Krechel wrote the preface for this first edition, which she will be reading out at the event. A video message from Eytan Wronker will also be played, in which he thanks the publisher and the archive for releasing his mother’s early work that she created 85 years ago.

Book launch: “London Diary” by Lili Cassel-Wronker
Tuesday 28 October 2025, 19:00
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Adickesallee 1, 60322 Frankfurt am Main
The event is held in cooperation with the Verlag Das kulturelle Gedächtnis publishing house as part of the 2025 Jewish Culture Weeks in Frankfurt
Admission free, booking required
Further information is available here: dnb.de/lilicasselwronker

Lili Cassel-Wronker: London Diary. Ein illustriertes Tagebuch aus den Jahren 1939 und 1940
first-time posthumous publication by Peter Graf with a preface by Ursula Krechel, ISBN: 978-3-946990-86-4, price 22 €, out in October 2025
http://daskulturellegedaechtnis.de/work/london/

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