18.3 mm, 2.15 g, brass? outer pearl circle, circular inscription GEBR. ROSENBERG ★ CHIOJDENI ★, value 5 inside an inner pearl circle	a coat of arms very similar to that of the German city of Cologne (Köln), year 1904

The village of Chiojdeni is located in Vrancea county. For the exploitation of wood in the Chiojdeni area a railway line with a gauge of 1000 mm was built between Motnău and Chiojdeni in 1903, with a length of 13.5 km, the beneficiary being the company Rosenberg Brothers.

The three crowns on the coat of arms represented on the token are a reference to the three magi from the biblical story, whose relics were kept in the Cologne cathedral. The drops on the coat of arms are the tears of Saint Ursula, the patroness of the city.

About brothers Rosenberg

Siegfried Rosenberg (1872-1944?) and his brothers Max, Paul and Arthur were the owners of the company Gebrüder Rosenberg (Rosenberg Brothers). Their business was in the lumber industry. Siegfried Rosenberg lived in the city of Cologne in Germany (hence the connection with the coat of arms on the token). During the Second World War, Siegfried and his wife were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto and then to the Auschwitz camp, where they were killed [1].

It is interesting to note that the Rosenberg brothers ran their businesses on several continents. Maximilian (Max) Rosenberg (1874-1932) lived in the Cape Colony (now in South Africa) between 1890 and 1906 [3]. For this reason, the main information about him can be found in the article dedicated to him in the Afrikaans version of the Wikipedia encyclopedia [3]. During this period, his brothers Arthur and Siegfried started a logging operation in Bucovina, then part of Austria-Hungary. Max moved to Galati in 1904 [2] (the year does not correspond to the year in which he moved to Romania according to the source [3]) to organize the export of the wood exploited in Chiojdeni to the Dutch port of Rotterdam [3]. Vera (1908-2000), Max's daughter, born in Galaţi and emigrated to Great Britain, is known as Vera Atkins. During the war he was part of a British secret service called the Special Operations Executive (SOE). After the end of the First World War, Max Rosenberg returned to Romania, settling in Crasna, in Bucovina [3].

References

1. NS-DOK (NS-Documentation Center of the City of Cologne), Rosenberg, Siegfried , visited November 2023.

2. Roman C., Vera ATKINS – a Romanian MATA HARI in the services of the SOE. (biografie inclusă în volumul Blouse Roumaine - An Anthology of Romanian Women), visited November 2023.

3. * * *, Max Rosenberg, Wikipedia, visited November 2023

4. Bălăiţă D., Jetoanele Chiojdeni. Colecţionarul român, nr. 5, 2009.