Name Walerian Krasinski | Role Politician | |
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Died 1855, Edinburgh, United Kingdom | ||
Count Walerian Skorobohaty Krasiński or Valerian Krasinski (1795– 22 December 1855) was a Polish Calvinist politician, nationalist and historian.
Krasinski was a Polish aristocrat in exile after the November Uprising 1830, during the Austrian, German and Russian partition of Poland. In 1844, he was proposed for a chair in Slavonic Studies at Oxford University. In 1848, he presented appeals to the Habsburg government. In Russia and Europe, or, The probable consequences of the present war he wrote on the Crimean War.
Krasinski's Historical sketch of the rise, progress, and decline of the Reformation in Poland (1838) still one of main texts on the subject available in English, was written in English. One of Krasinski's main sources is Slavonia reformata (1679) by Andreas Vengerscius.
He died in Edinburgh and is buried in the Warriston Cemetery close to another Polish exile, the violinist and composer Feliks Janiewicz, one of the co-organisers of the first Edinburgh Festival. The grave is marked by a tall grey granite obelisk. It lies in the overgrown area (2014) to the south-west, around 50m east of the more accessible monument to Horatio McCulloch.