Product Code Database
The Vehmic courts, Vehmgericht, holy vehme, or simply Vehm, also spelled Feme, Vehmegericht, Fehmgericht,OED, s.v. Vehmgericht. are names given to a tribunal system of Westphalia in Germany active during the Late Middle Ages, based on a fraternal organisation of lay judges called "free judges" ( or ). (2025). 9781778035708 ISBN 9781778035708 The original seat of the courts was in Dortmund. Proceedings were sometimes secret, leading to the alternative titles of "secret courts" (), "silent courts" (), or "forbidden courts" (). After the execution of a death sentence, the corpse could be hanged on a tree to advertise the fact and deter others.
The peak of activity of these courts was during the 14th to 15th centuries, with lesser activity attested for the 13th and 16th centuries, and scattered evidence establishing their continued existence during the 17th and 18th centuries. They were finally abolished by order of Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, in 1811.
The Vehmic courts were the regional courts of Westphalia which, in turn, were based on the county courts of Franconia. They received their jurisdiction from the Holy Roman Emperor, from whom they also received the capacity to pronounce capital punishment () which they exercised in his name. Everywhere else the power of life and death, originally reserved to the Emperor alone, had been usurped by the territorial nobles; only in Westphalia, called "the Red Earth" because here the imperial Blutbann (jurisdiction over life and death) was still valid, were capital sentences passed and executed by the Vehmic courts in the Emperor's name alone.
Jacob Grimm thought that the word is identical in origin to a homophonous word for the raising of pigs on forest pastures (Hutewald), just as the more familiar German Zucht can mean both breeding and discipline. aus ziehen flieszt zucht nutritio, disciplina, castigatio, poena, wie der landmann sein vieh in die mast führt, wird der missethäter in den kerker oder tod geführt und erleidet züchtigung. ( Deutsches Wörterbuch) Grimm considers the spelling with h unetymological in spite of its early occurrence in some 13th century documents, and hypothesizes a "lost root" " fëmen", connecting with Old Norse fimr and conjecturing a Gothic language " fiman, fam, fêmun?".
During 18th to 19th century Romanticism, there were various misguided attempts to explain the obscure term, or to elevate it to the status of a remnant of pagan antiquity, scoffed at by Grimm's entry in his Deutsches Wörterbuch. KLOPSTOCK 9, 322. 10, 258. 316 hat sogar die altn. dîsir (verunstaltet in düsen ) zu 'Göttinnen der Fehm' gemacht, die falsche Deutung ist der schlechten Formen werth. Wie viel Schriftsteller des 18 jh. sind mit der heiligen Fehme aufs übelste verfahren. An etymology suggested by James Skene in 1824 derives the word from Baumgericht (Lit. "Tree law"), supposedly the remnant of a pagan "forest law" of the Wild hunt and pagan secret societies.pg. 179 'Magical Alphabets' Nigel Pennick
The seat of the Vehmic court () was at first Dortmund, in a square between two , one of which was known as the Gerichtslinde. With the growing influence of Cologne during the 15th century, the seat was moved to Arnsberg in 1437.
Any free man "of pure bred German stock" and of good character could become a judge. The new candidate was given secret information and identification symbols. The "knowing one" () had to keep his knowledge secret, even from his closest family ("vor Weib und Kind, vor Sand und Wind"). Lay judges had to give formal warnings to known troublemakers, issue warrants, and take part in executions.
The organization of the Fehme was elaborate. The centre of each jurisdiction was referred to as a "free seat" (), and its head or chairman () was often a secular or spiritual prince, or sometimes a civic community leader. The archbishop of Cologne sat at the top of the hierarchy, "supreme over all" (). The actual president of the court was the "free count" (), chosen for life by the Stuhlherr from among the Freischöffen, who formed the great body of the initiated. Of these the lowest rank were the Fronboten or Freifronen, charged with the maintenance of order in the courts and the duty of carrying out the commands of the Freigraf. The immense development of the Fehme is explained by the privileges of the Freischöffen; for they were subject to no jurisdiction but those of the Westphalian courts: whether as accused or accuser they had access to the secret sessions, and they shared in the discussions of the general chapter as to the policy of the society. At their initiation these swore to support the Fehme with all their powers, to guard its secrets, and to bring before its tribunal anything within its competence that they might discover. They were then initiated into the secret signs by which members recognized each other, and were presented with a rope and with a knife on which were engraved the mystic letters S.S.G.G., supposed to mean Stein, Strick, Gras, grün (stone, rope, grass, green).
Freistuhl was the place of session, and was usually a hillock, or some other well-known and accessible spot. The Freigraf and the Schöffen (judges) occupied the bench, before which a table, with a sword and rope upon it, was placed. The court was held by day and, unless the session was declared secret, all freemen, whether initiated or not, were admitted. The accusation was in the old German form; but only a Freischöffe could act as accuser. If the offence came under the competence of the court, meaning it was punishable by death, a summons to the accused was issued under the seal of the Freigraf. This was not usually served on him personally, but was nailed to his door, or to some convenient place where he was certain to pass. Six weeks and three days' grace were allowed, according to the old Saxon law, and the summons was thrice repeated. If the accused appeared, the accuser stated the case, and the investigation proceeded by the examination of witnesses as in an ordinary court of law. The judgment was put into execution on the spot if that was possible.
The secret court, from whose procedure the whole institution has acquired its evil reputation, was closed to all but the initiated, although these were so numerous as to secure quasi-publicity; any one not a member on being discovered was instantly put to death, and the members present were bound under the same penalty not to disclose what took place. Crimes of a serious nature, and especially those that were deemed unfit for ordinary judicial investigation, such as heresy and witchcraft, fell within its jurisdiction, as also did appeals by persons condemned in the open courts, and likewise the cases before those tribunals in which the accused had not appeared. The accused, if a member, could clear himself by his own oath, unless he had revealed the secrets of the Fehme. If he were one of the uninitiated it was necessary for him to bring forward witnesses to his innocence from among the initiated, whose number varied according to the number on the side of the accuser, but twenty-one in favour of innocence necessarily secured an acquittal. The only punishment which the secret court could inflict was death. If the accused appeared, the sentence was carried into execution at once; if he did not appear, it was quickly made known to the whole body, and the Freischöffe who was the first to meet the condemned was bound to put him to death. This was usually done by hanging, the nearest tree serving for gallows. A knife with the mystic letters was left beside the corpse to show that the deed was not a murder.
It has been claimed that, in some cases, the condemned would be set free, given several hours' head start and then hunted down and put to death. So fearsome was the reputation of the Fehme and its reach that many thus released committed suicide rather than prolonging the inevitable. This practice could have been a holdover from the ancient Germanic legal concept of outlawry ( Acht).
Legend and romance have combined to exaggerate the sinister reputation of the Fehmic courts; but modern historical research has largely discounted this, proving that they never employed torture, that their sittings were only sometimes secret, and that their meeting-places were always well known.
Princes and nobles were initiated; and in 1429 even the Emperor Sigismund himself became "a true and proper Freischöffe of the Holy Roman Empire." There is a manuscript in the Town Hall of the Westphalian town of Soest which consists of an original Vehmic Court Regulation document, along with illustrations.
By the middle of the 14th century, these Freischöffen (Latin scabini), sworn associates of the Fehme, were scattered in thousands throughout the length and breadth of Germany, known to each other by secret signs and pass-words, and all of them pledged to serve the summons of the secret courts and to execute their judgment.
With the growing power of the territorial sovereigns and the gradual improvement of the ordinary process of justice, the functions of the Fehmic courts were superseded. By the action of the Emperor Maximilian and of other German princes they were, in the 16th century, once more restricted to Westphalia, and here, too, they were brought under the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, and finally confined to mere police duties. With these functions, however, but with the old forms long since robbed of their impressiveness, they survived into the 19th century. They were finally abolished by order of Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, in 1811. The last Freigraf died in 1835.
In an 1856 lecture, Karl Marx used the Vehmic courts as a metaphor to describe his predictions of the working-class revolution that would sweep Europe."If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the Vehm. All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross. History is the judge — its executioner the proletarian." As quoted in Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (2001, Transaction Publishers) , p. 15.
Within the politically heated turmoil of the early German Weimar Republic after World War I, the media frequently used the term Fememord to refer to right-wing political homicides, e.g. the murder of Jewish politicians such as Kurt Eisner (1919) or Walther Rathenau (1922) and other politicians including Matthias Erzberger (1921) by right-wing groups such as Organisation Consul. In 1926, the 27th Reichstag commission officially differentiated the contemporarily common Fememorde from political assassination in that assassination was by definition exerted upon open political opponents, whereas a Fememord was a form of lethal vengeance committed upon former or current members of an organization that they had become a traitor to. This definition is also found in the common pseudo-archaic, alliteration right-wing phrase, "Verräter verfallen der Feme!" ("Traitors shall be ostracized!", i. e. killed), as it was often quoted throughout the 1920s in mass media reports regarding violent acts of vengeance among the German Right.Gumbel, Emil Julius (1919). "Verräter verfallen der Feme": Opfer, Mörder, Richter, 1919-1929, Berlin: Malik-VerlagTucholsky, Kurt (1930). E. J. Gumbel, Berthold Jacob, Ernst Falck, "Verräter verfallen der Feme", Die Weltbühne (contemporary review of Gumbel's above book by Kurt Tucholsky)Hofmann, Ulrike C. (2000). "Verräter verfallen der Feme!" Fememorde in Bayern in den zwanziger Jahren, Cologne: Böhlau
In William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair "Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgericht of the servants' hall had pronounced against her.
A character in the Dorothy L. Sayers novel Murder Must Advertise appears at a fancy-dress party as a member of the Vehmgericht, which allows him to wear a hooded costume to disguise his identity. People in Femgericht costumes also appear in Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story.
In Fritz Lang's M, the local criminals of an unnamed city (probably Berlin) capture a child murderer and hold a vigilante court.
In The Illuminatus! Trilogy, the Vehmic courts are mentioned as being connected to Nazi Werwolf commandos as well as the Illuminati.
In A Study in Scarlet, a Sherlock Holmes novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, a newspaper article mentions the Vehmgericht, stating that the features of a recent death are similar to the organization's killings.
The Vehmgericht also appear as antagonists in The Strong Arm, an 1899 novel set in the Holy Roman Empire by British-Canadian author Robert Barr.
Geoff Taylor's 1966 novel, Court of Honor, features the Fehme being revived by a German officer and Martin Bormann in the dying days of the Third Reich.
Season 3, episode 12 of The Blacklist, titled The Vehm is based on a group of vigilantes using medieval torture methods to kill paedophiles and money launderers.
Jack Mayer's 2015 historical fiction, Before the Court of Heaven, depicts the Fehme, and 'Fehme justice' as part of the extreme right-wing conspiracy to bring down Germany's Weimar democracy.
|
|
