Вестфальские земские суды: Священный Фем и тайное правосудие Средневековья.

Courts in the later Middle Ages in Westphalia, Germany
The Vehmic courts, Vehmgericht, holy vehme, or simply Vehm, also spelt Feme, Vehmegericht, Fehmgericht, are names given to a tribunal system of Westphalia in Germany active during the later Middle Ages, based on a fraternal organisation of lay judges called "free judges" (Freischöffen or ). The original seat of the courts was in Dortmund. Proceedings were sometimes secret, leading to the alternative titles of "secret courts" (heimliches Gericht), "silent courts" (Stillgericht), or "forbidden courts" (verbotene Gerichte). 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 (Blutgericht) 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.

The term's origin is uncertain, but seems to enter Middle High German from Middle Low German. 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. 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.

The Westphalian Vehmic courts developed from the High Medieval "free courts" (Freigerichte), which had jurisdiction within a "free county" (Freigrafschaft). As a result of the 14th century imperial reform of the Holy Roman Empire (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 (Freistuhl) 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.

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". In an 1856 lecture, philosopher Karl Marx used the Vehmic courts as a metaphor to describe his predictions of the working class revolution that would sweep Europe. 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, 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.