Vehmic Court - Modern Use of The Term

Modern Use of The Term

Following the abandonment of the Vehmic courts, the term acquired a connotation of mob rule 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 Jewish 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.