League of the Holy Court
Encyclopedia
The Vehmic courts, Vehmgericht, holy vehme, or just the Vehm, also spelt Feme, are names given to a "proto-vigilante
" tribunal system of Westphalia
active during the later Middle Ages
, based on a fraternal organisation of lay judges called “free judges” ( or ). The principal seat of the courts was in Dortmund
. The proceedings were sometimes secret, leading to the alternative titles of “secret courts” , “silent courts” , or “forbidden courts” . The courts took jurisdiction over all crime
s during the Late Middle Ages, and those condemned by the tribunal were done away with by secret means. After the execution of the death sentence, the corpse was hung 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 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 was still valid, were capital sentences passed and executed by the Fehmic courts in the emperor's name alone.
. The word vëme first appears in the Middle High German
literature of the 13th century as a noun with the meaning of "punishment". A document dated to 1251 has the reference illud occultum judicium, quod vulgariter vehma seu vridinch appellari consuevit. ("It is hidden justice, that by common fashion is habitually referred to as vehma or vridinch.")
The general meaning of "punishment" is unrelated to the special courts of Westphalia which were thus originally just named "courts of punishment". But as the word entered the Southern German dialects via Saxony and Westphalia, the word's meaning in Early Modern German became attached to the activities of these courts specifically.
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. 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 "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
. A particularly fanciful 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.
and lynching
. In Modern German, the spelling of Feme is most common. Other variant forms are: Fehme, Feime, Veme. The verb verfemen is in current use and means "to ostracise", i.e. by public opinion rather than formal legal proceeding. A noun derived from this is Verfemter "outlaw, ostracised person".
Within the politically heated turmoil of the early Weimar Republic
, the media frequently used the term Fememord to refer to right-wing political homicides, e.g. the murder of Republican politicians such as Kurt Eisner
(1919), Matthias Erzberger
(1921), or Walther Rathenau
(1922) by right-wing groups such as Organisation Consul
. In 1926, the 27th Reichstag commission officially differed the contemporarily common Fememorde from political assassination in such 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 of. This definition is also found in the common pseudo-archaic, alliterating
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.
(Golden Bull of 1356
), the Landgraviates lost much of their power, and the Freigerichte disappeared, with the exception of Westphalia, where they retained their authority and transformed into the Vehmic court.
The seat of the Vehmic court was at first Dortmund
, in a square between two linden trees, one of which was known as the Femelinde
. With the growing influence of Cologne
during the 15th century, the seat was moved to Arnsberg
in 1437.
Any free man of good character could become a lay 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, sometimes a civic community, the archbishop of Cologne
being supreme over all . The actual president of the court was the “free count” .
The procedure of the fehmic courts was practically that of the ancient German courts generally. The 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 cabalistic 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.
They were, in fact, a survival of an ancient and venerable German institution; and if, during a certain period, they exercised something like a reign of terror over a great part of Germany, the cause of this lay in the sickness of the times, which called for some powerful organization to combat the growing feudal anarchy. Such an organization the Westphalian free courts, with their discipline of terror and elaborate system of secret service, were well calculated to supply.
on the fall of Henry the Lion
, when the archbishop of Cologne, duke of Westphalia from 1180 onwards, placed himself as representative of the emperor at the head of the Fehme.
The organization now rapidly spread. Every free man, born in lawful wedlock, and neither excommunicate nor outlaw, was eligible for membership.
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.
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.
or, The Maiden of the Mist by Sir Walter Scott in which Archibald von Hagenbach, the Duke of Burgundy's governor at Brisach (Switzerland), is condemned and executed by the Vehmgericht. Scott drew his inspiration from Goethe
's play Goetz von Berlichingen which he had translated, incorrectly.
In William Makepeace Thackeray
's novel 'Vanity Fair' "Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgerich of tho servants' hal 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.
In The Illuminatus! Trilogy
, the Vehmic courts are mentioned as being connected to Nazi Werewolves
as well as the Illuminati
.
In A Study in Scarlet
, a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
, the retribution of the Mormons is compared to that of the Vehmgericht.
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
(a featured character in other semi-historical novels with post-war 'Nazi underground' themes) in the dying days of the Third Reich.
Vigilante
A vigilante is a private individual who legally or illegally punishes an alleged lawbreaker, or participates in a group which metes out extralegal punishment to an alleged lawbreaker....
" tribunal system of Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
active during the later Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, based on a fraternal organisation of lay judges called “free judges” ( or ). The principal seat of the courts was in Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
. The proceedings were sometimes secret, leading to the alternative titles of “secret courts” , “silent courts” , or “forbidden courts” . The courts took jurisdiction over all crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
s during the Late Middle Ages, and those condemned by the tribunal were done away with by secret means. After the execution of the death sentence, the corpse was hung on a tree to advertise the fact and deter others.
Jérôme Bonaparte
Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...
, 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
Franconia
Franconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a small part of southern Thuringia, and a region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Tauberfranken...
. They received their jurisdiction from the 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 was still valid, were capital sentences passed and executed by the Fehmic courts in the emperor's name alone.
Obscure origins
The term's origin is uncertain, but seems to enter Middle High German from Middle Low GermanMiddle Low German
Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League...
. The word vëme first appears in the Middle High German
Middle High German
Middle High German , abbreviated MHG , is the term used for the period in the history of the German language between 1050 and 1350. It is preceded by Old High German and followed by Early New High German...
literature of the 13th century as a noun with the meaning of "punishment". A document dated to 1251 has the reference illud occultum judicium, quod vulgariter vehma seu vridinch appellari consuevit. ("It is hidden justice, that by common fashion is habitually referred to as vehma or vridinch.")
The general meaning of "punishment" is unrelated to the special courts of Westphalia which were thus originally just named "courts of punishment". But as the word entered the Southern German dialects via Saxony and Westphalia, the word's meaning in Early Modern German became attached to the activities of these courts specifically.
Jacob Grimm
Jacob Grimm
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist and mythologist. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law, the author of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy...
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. 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 "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
Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism refers to the theology and religious practices of the Germanic peoples of north-western Europe from the Iron Age until their Christianization during the Medieval period...
antiquity, scoffed at by Grimm's entry in his Deutsches Wörterbuch
Deutsches Wörterbuch
Das Deutsche Wörterbuch / Deutsches Wörterbuch is one of the most important dictionaries of the German language...
. A particularly fanciful 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
Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal, spectral group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground,...
and pagan secret societies.
Modern use
Following the abandonment of the Vehmic courts, the term acquired a connotation of mob ruleOchlocracy
Ochlocracy or mob rule is government by mob or a mass of people, or the intimidation of legitimate authorities.As a pejorative for majoritarianism, it is akin to the Latin phrase mobile vulgus meaning "the fickle crowd", from which the English term "mob" was originally derived in the...
and lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
. In Modern German, the spelling of Feme is most common. Other variant forms are: Fehme, Feime, Veme. The verb verfemen is in current use and means "to ostracise", i.e. by public opinion rather than formal legal proceeding. A noun derived from this is Verfemter "outlaw, ostracised person".
Within the politically heated turmoil of the early Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, the media frequently used the term Fememord to refer to right-wing political homicides, e.g. the murder of Republican politicians such as Kurt Eisner
Kurt Eisner
Kurt Eisner was a Bavarian politician and journalist. As a German socialist journalist and statesman, he organized the Socialist Revolution that overthrew the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria in November 1918....
(1919), Matthias Erzberger
Matthias Erzberger
Matthias Erzberger was a German politician. Prominent in the Centre Party, he spoke out against the First World War from 1917 and eventually signed the Armistice with Germany for the German Empire...
(1921), or Walther Rathenau
Walther Rathenau
Walther Rathenau was a German Jewish industrialist, politician, writer, and statesman who served as Foreign Minister of Germany during the Weimar Republic...
(1922) by right-wing groups such as Organisation Consul
Organisation Consul
Organisation Consul was an ultra-nationalist force operating in Germany in 1921 and 1922. It was formed by members of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, a Freikorps unit which disbanded after the Kapp Putsch failed to overthrow the German Weimar Republic...
. In 1926, the 27th Reichstag commission officially differed the contemporarily common Fememorde from political assassination in such 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 of. This definition is also found in the common pseudo-archaic, alliterating
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
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.
Origin
The Westphalian Vehmic courts developed from the High Medieval “free courts” , which had jurisdiction within a “free county” . As a result of the 14th century imperial reform of the Holy Roman EmpireHoly Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
(Golden Bull of 1356
Golden Bull of 1356
The Golden Bull of 1356 was a decree issued by the Reichstag assembly in Nuremberg headed by the Luxembourg Emperor Charles IV that fixed, for a period of more than four hundred years, important aspects of the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman Empire...
), the Landgraviates lost much of their power, and the Freigerichte disappeared, with the exception of Westphalia, where they retained their authority and transformed into the Vehmic court.
The seat of the Vehmic court was at first Dortmund
Dortmund
Dortmund is a city in Germany. It is located in the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia, in the Ruhr area. Its population of 585,045 makes it the 7th largest city in Germany and the 34th largest in the European Union....
, in a square between two linden trees, one of which was known as the Femelinde
Gerichtslinde
In the Holy Roman Empire, a was a linden tree where assemblies and judicial courts were held...
. With the growing influence of Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
during the 15th century, the seat was moved to Arnsberg
Arnsberg
Arnsberg is a town in the Hochsauerland district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the location of the Regierungsbezirk Arnsberg's administration and one of the three local administration offices of the Hochsauerlandkreis.-Geography:...
in 1437.
Membership and procedure
The sessions were often held in secret, whence the names of “secret court” , “silent court” , etc. Attendance of these sessions was forbidden to the uninitiated, on pain of death, which led to the designation “forbidden courts” . A chairman presided over the court, and lay judges passed judgment.Any free man of good character could become a lay 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, sometimes a civic community, the archbishop of Cologne
Archbishopric of Cologne
The Electorate of Cologne was an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire and existed from the 10th to the early 19th century. It consisted of the temporal possessions of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cologne . It was ruled by the Archbishop in his function as prince-elector of...
being supreme over all . The actual president of the court was the “free count” .
The procedure of the fehmic courts was practically that of the ancient German courts generally. The 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 cabalistic 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.
They were, in fact, a survival of an ancient and venerable German institution; and if, during a certain period, they exercised something like a reign of terror over a great part of Germany, the cause of this lay in the sickness of the times, which called for some powerful organization to combat the growing feudal anarchy. Such an organization the Westphalian free courts, with their discipline of terror and elaborate system of secret service, were well calculated to supply.
The spread of the Fehmic courts
The system, though ancient, began to become of importance only after the division of the duchy of SaxonyDuchy of Saxony
The medieval Duchy of Saxony was a late Early Middle Ages "Carolingian stem duchy" covering the greater part of Northern Germany. It covered the area of the modern German states of Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Saxony-Anhalt and most of Schleswig-Holstein...
on the fall of Henry the Lion
Henry the Lion
Henry the Lion was a member of the Welf dynasty and Duke of Saxony, as Henry III, from 1142, and Duke of Bavaria, as Henry XII, from 1156, which duchies he held until 1180....
, when the archbishop of Cologne, duke of Westphalia from 1180 onwards, placed himself as representative of the emperor at the head of the Fehme.
The organization now rapidly spread. Every free man, born in lawful wedlock, and neither excommunicate nor outlaw, was eligible for membership.
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
Soest, Germany
Soest is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the capital of the Soest district. After Lippstadt, a neighbouring town, Soest is the second biggest town in its district.-Geography:...
, 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.
Decline and dissolution of the Courts
That an organization of this character should have outlived its usefulness and ushered in intolerable abuses was inevitable. 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 MaximilianEmperor Maximilian
Emperor Maximilian may refer to:* Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor * Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor * Maximillian I of Mexico, Austrian-born royal, Emperor of Mexico...
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
Jérôme Bonaparte
Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...
, king of Westphalia, in 1811. The last Freigraf died in 1835.
The Vehmic courts in fiction
Vehmic courts play a key role in the novel Anne of GeiersteinAnne of Geierstein
Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist is a novel by Sir Walter Scott. It is set in Central Europe, mainly in Switzerland, shortly after the Yorkist victory at the Battle of Tewkesbury...
or, The Maiden of the Mist by Sir Walter Scott in which Archibald von Hagenbach, the Duke of Burgundy's governor at Brisach (Switzerland), is condemned and executed by the Vehmgericht. Scott drew his inspiration from Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
's play Goetz von Berlichingen which he had translated, incorrectly.
In William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
's novel 'Vanity Fair' "Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgerich of tho servants' hal had pronounced against her.
A character in the Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
novel Murder Must Advertise
Murder Must Advertise
Murder Must Advertise is a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, published in 1933.Most of the action takes place in an advertising agency, a setting with which Sayers was very familiar. One of her advertising colleagues, Bobby Bevan, was the inspiration for the character Mr Ingleby...
appears at a fancy-dress party as a member of the Vehmgericht, which allows him to wear a hooded costume to disguise his identity.
In The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson first published in 1975. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magick-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both...
, the Vehmic courts are mentioned as being connected to Nazi Werewolves
Werwolf
Werwolf was the name given to a Nazi plan, which began development in 1944, to create a commando force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany itself. Werwolf remained entirely ineffectual as a combat force, however, and in practical terms, its value as...
as well as the Illuminati
Illuminati
The Illuminati is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776...
.
In A Study in Scarlet
A Study in Scarlet
A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, introducing his new character of Sherlock Holmes, who later became one of the most famous literary detective characters. He wrote the story in 1886, and it was published the next year...
, a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...
, the retribution of the Mormons is compared to that of the Vehmgericht.
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
Robert Barr (writer)
Robert Barr was a British-Canadian short story writer and novelist, born in Glasgow, Scotland.-Early Years in Canada:...
.
Geoff Taylor's 1966 novel, Court Of Honor, features the Fehme being revived by a German officer and Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
(a featured character in other semi-historical novels with post-war 'Nazi underground' themes) in the dying days of the Third Reich.