Basil de Weryha-Wysoczański

Basil, 1st Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz[1] (23 April 1816 – 25 October 1891) was a Polish wholesale merchant, landowner, town property owner[2] and philanthropist from Odessa.[3]

The Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz
Born(1816-04-23)23 April 1816
Wysocko Wyżne, Austria-Hungary
Died25 October 1891(1891-10-25) (aged 75)
Odessa, Russian Empire
NationalityPolish
OccupationWholesale merchant, landowner, town property owner and philanthropist
AwardsSilver Medal on the Ribbon of Saint Stanislas
The Wukry coat of arms

He came from an old noble family of Walachian[4] boyar[5] stock and was the 4th son of Jan, 2nd Chevalier Wysoczański de Pietrusiewicz.[6] He had one daughter, Wilhelmine, who married a Swiss rentier and died at age 19 in Cannes,[7] as well a favoured place of her father and of the international nobility in general.[8] The son of his niece Anna[7] was composer Yaroslav Yaroslavenko, for whom de Weryha-Wysoczański stood sponsor.

Biography

Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, de Weryha-Wysoczański made his money, as his biographer informs us in 1892, with vodka supplies for the army during the Crimean War. As a result he bought landed estates and town property and ‘became a merchant on a grand scale’. According to his biographer, he once lost a whole ship on the sea but more than made up his losses. He soon got rid of a café-pâtisserie on Odessa’s famous Deribasovskaya Street and, as his biographer puts it, ‘became a fully-fledged gentleman capitalist’. His biographer estimated that de Weryha-Wysoczański’s cash alone amounted to £11.700.000.[9] In 1861 he was awarded the Silver Medal on the Ribbon of Saint Stanislas[10] and in 1876 received a confirmation of the title of Hereditary Chevalier of Galicia with the Wukry coat of arms,[2] extended to all direct descendants in the male line of his elder brother Gregory, some of whom still living to this day.[4] He died in Odessa in the Russian Empire.

Philanthropy
St. Nicholas Church in Wysocko Wyżne donated by Basil, 1st Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz, built by Jan Lewiński

De Weryha-Wysoczański donated £2.340.000 for scholarships, for the education of children.[11] After the death of his only daughter, he gave in Odessa, in February 1885, £900.000 for orphaned girls who would be paid dowries.[12] He founded the Saint Nicholas Church in Wysocko Wyżne, Austro-Hungarian Empire,[3] the consecration of which took place on 13 October 1891.[13] Its architect was Jan Lewiński and its polychromy was carried out by Teofil Kopystyński. It is a large church with both neoclassical and neobyzantine elements.[14]

In 1930 de Weryha-Wysoczański’s life was made into a biographical novel by Ivan Fylypchak by the title Willpower (Lwów 1930; second edition Sambor 1999).[3] De Weryha-Wysoczański features in it with his real name, although other names were changed, as well as some facts for reasons of dramatisation.

References
  1. Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Adelige Häuser XXX, Limburg a. d. Lahn 2008, vol 145, p. 420, ISBN 978-3-7980-0845-8, OCLC 1570546.
  2. Gothaisches Genealogisches Handbuch, Adelige Häuser IV, Marburg 2018, vol 8, p. 497, ISBN 978-3-9817243-7-0, OCLC 995606854.
  3. Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, A Chevalier from Poland. The Memoirs of Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, Kibworth Beauchamp 2016, p. 8, ISBN 978-1785891618, OCLC 956765261.
  4. Gothaisches Genealogisches Handbuch, Adelige Häuser IV, Marburg 2018, vol 8, p. 487, ISBN 978-3-9817243-7-0, OCLC 995606854.
  5. Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, A Chevalier from Poland. The Memoirs of Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, Kibworth Beauchamp 2016, p. 1, ISBN 978-1785891618, OCLC 956765261.
  6. Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, A Chevalier from Poland. The Memoirs of Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, Kibworth Beauchamp 2016, p. 9, ISBN 978-1785891618, OCLC 956765261.
  7. Gothaisches Genealogisches Handbuch, Adelige Häuser IV, Marburg 2018, vol 8, p. 498, ISBN 978-3-9817243-7-0, OCLC 995606854.
  8. Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, A Chevalier from Poland. The Memoirs of Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański, Kibworth Beauchamp 2016, p. 79, ISBN 978-1785891618, OCLC 956765261.
  9. Demeter Więckowski, Basil Wysoczański and the New Church in Wysocko Wyżne [in Russian], Lwów 1892, chapters 5-6.
  10. "Wiener Zeitung", 29 June 1861.
  11. Semen Behei, Stefaniia Behei, Formuvannia natsionalʹnoi svidomosti ta elity, Lwów 2001, p. 9.
  12. Demeter Więckowski, Basil Wysoczański and the New Church in Wysocko Wyżne [in Russian], Lwów 1892, p. 18.
  13. "Kuryer Lwowski", 19 October 1891.
  14. Grzegorz Rąkowski, Ukraińskie karpaty i podkarpacie: Czȩść zachodnia, vol 1, Pruszków 2013, pp. 436-7, ISBN 978-83-62460-31-1.
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