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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;bart, post: 605772, member: 5580&quot;]chrisild already answered why the name Rau was written on the coin: Marcel Rau is indeed the designer of both obverse and reverse.</p><p><br /></p><p>About the person depicted: the portrait is in fact the goddess Ceres. As Belgium was in a full constitutional crisis at the time (it still is, but for other reasons) about the returning of king Leopold III from exile, the government decided it was better not to put the king&#039;s effigy on the new coins. So the goddes Ceres, goddess of agriculture was chosen to figurate on the 1 and 5 francs coins.</p><p>After WW II king Leopold III, who was taken to Germany, was advised to stay outside the country as his position in Belgium was not very clear. Some people thought he collaborated with the German occupier. So, he went into exile in Switzerland and his brother prince Charles of Flanders became prince-regent.</p><p>In 1950, the regency of prince Charles of Flanders ended. King Leopold III returned to Belgium and abdicated almost immediately in favour of his son Baudouin. The Ceres-coins were struck until 1981 and circulated until the end of the eighties.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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