Basil, Chevalier de Weryha-Wysoczański

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

He came from an old noble family of Walachian boyar stock and was the 4th son of Jan, 2nd Chevalier Wysoczański de Pietrusiewicz. He had one daughter, Wilhelmine, who married a Swiss rentier and died at age 19 in Cannes, as well a favoured place of her father and of the international nobility in general. The son of his niece Anna In 1861 he was awarded the Silver Medal on the Ribbon of Saint Stanislas and in 1876 received a confirmation of the title of Hereditary Chevalier of Galicia with the Wukry coat of arms, After the death of his only daughter, he gave in Odessa, in February 1885, £900.000 for orphaned girls who would be paid dowries. He founded the Saint Nicholas Church in Wysocko Wyżne, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 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.

In popular culture 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). De Weryha-Wysoczański features in it with his real name, although other names were changed, as well as some facts for reasons of dramatisation.