Basil de Weryha-Wysoczański
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Wholesale merchant
- landowner
- town property owner
- philanthropist
The Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański-Pietrusiewicz | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 23 April 1816 |
| Died | 25 October 1891 (aged 75) |
| Occupations |
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| Awards | Silver Medal on the Ribbon of Saint Stanislas |
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]
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.
Born in the Austrian 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
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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]
