Vehmic Court - Membership and Procedure

Membership and Procedure

The sessions were often held in secret, whence the names of “secret court” (German: heimliches Gericht), “silent court” (German: Stillgericht), etc. Attendance of these sessions was forbidden to the uninitiated, on pain of death, which led to the designation “forbidden courts” (German: verbotene Gerichte). A chairman (German: Stuhlherr) presided over the court, and lay judges (German: Freischöffen) passed judgment. The court also constituted a Holy Order.

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” (German: Wissende) 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” (German: Freistuhl), and its head or chairman (German: Stuhlherr) was often a secular or spiritual prince, sometimes a civic community, the archbishop of Cologne being supreme over all (German: Oberststuhlherren). The actual president of the court was the “free count” (German: Freigraf, 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).

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 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.

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.