1945 Belgian 1 Franc Coin (Occupation)--Strange Obverse

Hello and welcome.

Both your coin and the Wikipedia coin are genuine. "The story" with them is the unique nature of the country that issued them.

Belgium is a bilingual country: French and Flemish (a form of Dutch). While many countries have more than one official language, Belgium was rather unique in, for a long time, issuing two different sets of coins in the two different languages, at the same time, that circulated side-by-side. On some coins, both languages appear, yet they still issued two different coins, with the words from the two languages swapping positions - as you have discovered. Even under Nazi occupation, the tradition continued.

Here's the catalogue entry for the French-on-the-right version of your coin. And here's the catalogue entry for the French-on-the-left version. As you can see, only the French-on-the-right version was struck in 1945.

I'd also point out that by 1945, Belgium had been fully liberated by the Allies, so technically your coin isn't "occupation". Unlike most other liberated countries, Belgium continued to issue and use the same coin designs used under the Occupation until 1950. This was primarily because they couldn't issue new post-war coin designs because they were still debating amongst themselves what kind of government they should have, since the monarchy was widely seen as collaborationist. Wikipedia. It also explains why most of the coins of the post-1950 series are very non-regal looking in appearance.