Renaldo Kuhler, wearing a Rocaterranian Conservation Corps uniform.
“Each man is a nation unto himself and what he does with that nation is up to him.”
Renaldo Kuhler (1931—2013) was an American outsider artist who worked as a scientific illustrator for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. He also spent over 60 years secretly developing and illustrating an imaginary country called Rocaterrania, complete with its own history, culture, fashion (which he created and wore himself), language, and religion.
His life and works were shared with the world in 2009 with the documentary film Rocaterrania, and in 2017 with the book The Secret World of Renaldo Kuhler, both created by his friend and colleague Brett Ingram (who Kuhler considered Like a Son to Me).
Kuhler himself provides examples of:
- Be Yourself: In the words of his close friend Brett Ingram, Kuhler “was unabashedly, unapologetically, incorrigibly himself as a moral imperative”.
- Cosplay: Kuhler was known for wearing eccentric outfits in his everyday life, based on designs he drew for Rocaterranian characters.
- Friendless Background: As a child he was sent to boarding schools where the students and teachers bullied him, and as a teenager his family moved to the middle of nowhere in Colorado. Thankfully averted in his adult life; while undoubtedly eccentric, he was a local fixture of Raleigh and beloved by many in the community.
- New Technology Is Evil: Kuhler self-described himself as "urban Amish", and never drove a car or used a computer. He only grudgingly traded his rotary phone for a more modern one later in life. This is reflected in Rocaterrania, whose people strongly prefer trains to cars.
- The Nicknamer: He was fond of giving his friends and coworkers nicknames that often made no sense to anyone but himself. For example, Ingram's nicknames were "Paste" and "Spike".
- Renaissance Man: Kuhler was an expert in history, architecture, film, languages, calligraphy, and religions. He played a hand-built plywood violin, and smoked mullein from handcrafted pipes. And of course, he was an accomplished artist.
- Third-Person Person: He often referred to himself using the Royal "We".
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: In the introduction to the book, Ingram mentions that "his accent was nearly as inscrutable as his outfit", containing traces of German, British, and New York English.
Rocaterrania provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Rocaterranian characters have names like Peekle, Beulis, Frijoles, Georg Nicholai, and Gorghendi, and on the other hand Janet, Catherine, Joe, and Leon.
- Blue Blood: Emperor Georg Nicholai's military officers were all aristocrats.
- Conlang: He invented an entire language, Rocaterranski, for his fictional country, complete with its own writing system. It's based on Spanish, German, and Yiddish, with a touch of Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Italian, Dutch, and various Slavic languages. The script is based on Hebrew and Cyrillic lettering.
- Cope by Creating/Escapism: Kuhler invented Rocaterrania as a way to escape his unhappy teenage years, stuck in the middle of nowhere in Colorado with bickering parents after being forced to move across the country."The ability to fantasize is the ability to survive."
- Creator Breakdown/Creator Recovery: Rocaterrania's evolving history reflected Kuhler's own life. When he created it, he was a teenager living with authoritarian parents, and the country was ruled by emperors. As he gained independence, those monarchs were overthrown by a revolution, and once he achieved a stable career as an illustrator, it settled into a socialist democracy.
- Creator Cameo: Ronald L. Kuhler (his birth name was Ronald Otto Louis Kuhler) is mentioned, as the twin brother of Intrepid Reporter Renelda Kuhler. An American, he married into a prominent Rocaterranian family.
- Culture Chop Suey: Rocaterrania was founded by a Russian noble and his French-Belgian wife, and its architecture has Eastern European, American, Chinese, and Victorian influences. Immigrants from many different European countries soon populated the new country. The name of the capital Ciudad Eldorado is Spanish.
- Egopolis: The small town of St. Phillippsbourg is named after the first emperor, August Phillippe.
- The Emperor: For the first 22 years of its existence, Rocaterrania was ruled by emperors, despite being a tiny nation between Canada and New York State.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Empress Catherine was widely considered the true power behind the throne during her husband's reign, and after his mysterious death (later discovered to be poison) she ruled with an iron hand. She had a Secret Police and surrounded herself with "neutants" (eunuchs) made from street urchins.
- The Gulag: Serving in the Rocaterranian Conservation Corps/National Labor Service is not optional. The living conditions in Rocaterranian labor camps are generally better than in Soviet gulags, though.
- Identical Stranger: Georg Nicholai de Rochelle and Nikolai Romanovski are noted to look very similar, despite not being blood relatives.
- Interfaith Smoothie: Ojallaism, a syncretic monotheistic religion, developed organically in the mines and working-class communities of Rocaterrania before being codified and building churches, cathedrals, and monasteries.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: The royal family of Rocaterrania is clearly supposed to parallel the Romanovs, with the first emperor, a Russian noble, even having "Romanovski" as a surname, and the final emperor having "Nicholai" as part of his name. There's even a princess, Anne Marie, who has an unspecified sickness, similar to Alexei and his hemophilia. The monarchy was overthrown in 1953, with a similar murder of the royal family, and the country struggled under a provisional government before being overthrown by the Viekschorznik (a calque of "Bolshevik") party, led by the Lenin expy Gorghendi Kahn.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted with cousins Josef and Josip Wepka, both important political figures.
- Secret Police: Empress Catherine had her Escort Guard, and Georg Nicholai had the Securiana. The Federal Socialist government shows it's not so different with the Buscarana.
- Take That!: Kuhler makes his liberal politics clear in Rocaterrania. The "G.O.P. Republican Party" of Rocaterrania and its Freikorps are a far-right group who murdered the royal family and tried to spread American capitalist influence. Eisenhower and Nixon are not highly regarded there either. There is a brief mention of fundamentalist Christians, the "Jesus creeps", infiltrating and proselytizing, but they were soon deported.
- Too Dumb to Live: Georg Nicholai was an autocratic ruler who alienated nearly everyone in Rocaterrania, and even wanted to invade the United States to gain more territory...in 1953. When the US had developed nuclear weapons. Good thing he was overthrown before that could happen.
- Tuckerization: Some of the characters in Rocaterrania are clearly influenced by, if not based on, Kuhler's family — the first Emperor August Phillippe (named after his father Otto August Kuhler) and his wife, Empress Mary Catherine (who shares his mother's Belgian background and abusive tendencies).
- Worldbuilding: The entirety of Rocaterrania is a rich collection of lore that Kuhler created over more than 60 years.
