CHAPTER X

THE VEHMGERICHT
The Vehmgericht (the court of the Verne) is the name given to the tribunals that arose about the middle of the thirteenth century in Westphalia during the epoch of tumult and licence which followed the outlawry of Henry the Lion.1 The Emperor lacked the ability to enforce his authority on the wide extent of territory lying between the Rhine and Weser, bounded on the north by Friesland and to the south by the mountains of Hesse, all of which was then known as Westphalia; as a consequence, male¬ factors of every description, from petty feudal barons to bands of roaming thieves, began to harry the peaceful inhabitants, and to curtail their activities the Vehm came into existence as a means of self-help and rough and ready justice devised by the law-abiding. Since it arose in this way by general consent of the governed, it enjoyed popular support in its early days; nor did some of its most ardent supporters hesitate to claim for it a greater antiquity than history would warrant by ascribing its original institution to the Emperor Charlemagne in the eighth century.
There is much uncertainty about the true meaning of the name. Leibnitz derived Fehm or Vehm from Jama , as the law founded on common fame, common law as we have it in England. Fehm also meant something set apart. A modern scholar has defined Vehm as meaning fellow¬ ship or community.2 Thus the real meaning remains as
1 Duke of Saxony and Bavaria and head of the Guelphs. He was the most powerful noble in Germany. Placed under the ban of the empire by Frederick I in 1180, he remained so till 1 192, when it was removed by Henry VI.
2 Theodor Lindner, Die Verne, Munster, 1888. Genosseruchqft and Gcmeinschafl are the words he uses.
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FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
mysterious as ever were the proceedings of the tribunal itself.1
These, however, were not nearly so mysterious or romantic as they have been described in Scott’s Anne of Geier stein. The meetings of the Vehm usually took place in the open air, and at a well-known rendezvous. At Nordkirchen the court was held in a churchyard; at Dort¬ mund in the market-place of the town. The usual time for its sittings was in the morning, not at night.
These courts were known by different names: Fehmding (Assembly of the Vehm), Freistuhl (Free Chair), Heim- liches Gericht (Secret Court), Heimliches Acht (Secret Tribunal)2, Fleimliches Beschlossenes Acht (Secret Closed Tribunal), and Verbotene Acht (Forbidden Tribunal), all of which are undoubtedly awe-inspiring titles.
However, it had even better means of inspiring awe, chief of which was the number of persons in every rank of life who were bound by oath either to administer its code or to enforce its decrees. These oath-bound adherents were called Die Wissenden, the Knowing Ones, and are said to have numbered upwards of 100,000 persons. A form of oath preserved in writing at Dortmund is said to be that by which these supporters of the Verne bound themselves to uphold it invoking dreadful penalties on themselves in case of failure.
It has been translated as follows :
“I swear by my sacred honour that I will hold and con¬ ceal the secrets of the Holy Vehm From sun and from moon,
From man and from woman,
From wife and from child,
From village and from field,
From grass and from beast,
From great and from small,
1 The word first occurs in connexion with a Vimenote at Munster in 1229. In 1251 a document dealing with the town Brilon mentions the “secret court vulgarly called Vehm or Freiding” — “illud occultum iudicium quod vulgariter Vehma seu vridinch appellari consuevit.” Reinhold Brode, Freigrafschaft und Vehm, Hanover, 1886.
2 The literal meaning of Acht in M.H.G. is outlawry.
THE VEHMGERICHT
63
Except from the man
Who the Holy Vehm serve can,
And that I’ll leave nothing undone For love or for fear,
For garment or gift,
For silver or gold,
Nor for any wife’s scold.”1
Apparently anyone in any station of life could be sworn in as an upholder of the tribunal, provided he were a free man ; but there were different ways in which he might be called upon to serve. Highest in rank were the Stuhl- herren, who were the Judges; these were few in number. Then came the Freischoffen, the Deputy Judges. Lastly, the Frohnboten, the officers of the court who executed its decrees; so that the Freischoffen and Frohnboten may be said to have “ combined the various functions of jurors, constables, inquisitors, detectives and executioners.” 2
On the evidence of some Vehmic writings that have been preserved at Herford, in Westphalia, those affiliated to the service of the Verne are said to have possessed a secret language; and the initial letters S S S G G occurring in these writings have been explained as Stock, Stein, Strick, Gras, Grein — Stick, Stone, Halter, Grass, Quarrel. While it would be unwise either to accept this as a true interpre¬ tation, or the letters themselves as a proof of the theory advanced, there would after all be nothing very surprising in finding that the adherents of the Verne had developed their own jargon to describe the everyday operations of their calling, much as the learned professions of to-day still continue to do.3
The tribunals possessed their written codes which were guarded from falling into the hands of unauthorized persons, who rendered themselves liable to punishment by any attempt to pry into the secrets. This can have held good only in the early days of the Verne, because in its later
1 Pollard Urquhart, The Vehmgericht, 1868.
2 Urquhart, Op, cit.
3 It is said that one of their signs of recognition was when sitting at table to turn the handles of their knives towards the dish and the points towards themselves.
64 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
stages the code was revised from time to time by the emperors, which would argue a general promulgation of its provisions ; moreover, it would be hard to presume an obedience to laws and regulations knowledge of which was forbidden to the people called upon to observe them. No Vehmic manuscript of an earlier date than the fifteenth century has been preserved.
The courts were either open to the public, when they were known as Offenbare Dinge, or reserved only for those who were oath-bound t© the Verne, when the gathering was known as a Heimliclie Acht, Secret Tribunal. It is said that if an uninitiated intruder were discovered in such a court he was liable to be hanged on the spot.
According to Lindner,1 the only penalty that the Verne was competent to inflict was death, and this in only one mode, by hanging on the nearest tree.2 That was the usual medieval penalty for theft, and gives an index towards the particular class of crime the Verne in its original form had aimed at suppressing. As it is, conflicting statements have been made about the type of crimes of which the Verne took cognizance. One version runs that they concerned themselves with all offences against the Christian faith and the Ten Commandments3; but quite apart from the improbability of the clergy’s allowing such offences to be dealt with outside of the ecclesiastical courts, the penalty of hanging would in many instances have been too draconian even for medieval ideas. Moreover, the same authority tells us that certain classes of persons were exempted from the jurisdiction of the Verne, such as children, women, Jews, heathens and the higher nobility. The two assertions seem mutually destructive, unless we assume, which is very probably the case, that the juris¬ diction and powers of the Verne fluctuated from period to period, and what held good for one epoch had become a dead-letter in the next.
1 Op. cit.
3 According to Brode, the Vehm was the special court of Freemen in West¬ phalia long before it became the recognised criminal court, this is at variance with Lindner’s statement about only one penalty.
3 C. W. Heckethorn, Secret Societies , London, 1897.
THE VEHMGERICHT
65
The criminal procedure began with an accusation laid by a Freischoffe in one of the courts, which thereupon issued a summons to the accused to appear before an open court if he were unconnected with the Verne, but before a secret court if bound to them by oath. It is easy to see the reason for this: a malefactor accused of infringing the code that he had sworn to uphold was also a traitor, and evidence of his delinquency in the latter capacity could be more freely given when only initiates were present.
Three separate summonses were sent to give the accused the opportunity of appearing. Six weeks and three days were allowed for answering each of them; and various methods of serving the notices had become prescribed by custom.
If the accused did not appear before the court in answer to any of these citations, he was condemned in contumaciam ; but not before the accuser had produced seven witnesses to swear to his own good reputation as a truthful person. Then the Imperial Ban was pronounced against the absent malefactor.
“The sentence was one of outlawry, degradation and death — his neck was condemned to the halter, and his body to the birds and wild beasts; his goods and estates were declared forfeited, his wife a widow, and his children orphans.”1
There is no doubt, however, that a person condemned in contumaciam became Fehmbar, that is as much as to say an outlaw for supporters of the Verne, and any three of them who could lay hands on him were at liberty to do justice by hanging him on the nearest tree. It is probable that in cases of notorious crimes a posse of special constables would be formed to hunt down the missing felon ; but we must not exaggerate such procedure into a picture of every oath- bound supporter of the Verne abandoning all his private concerns in order to join in the hue and cry. The accuser
1 Heckethorn, Op. cit. This statement of the case must be accepted with caution. The only penalty inflicted by the Verne was hanging; and at its inception, at all events, it had no power to pronounce the Imperial Ban, nor would the latter have caused a Westphalian gangster a moment’s uneasi¬ ness in a country where the Emperor’s writ did not run.
66 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
was given a sealed document to be shown when claiming the assistance of fellow-members in executing the judgment of the court; but this must not be construed as a kind of medieval Police News circulated to warn all the initiated that they were to hang So-and-so, if they could lay hands on him. However, to give any such malefactor warning that danger was approaching him from the direction of the Verne was to render oneself liable to instant hanging on the nearest tree.
If the accused person decided to put in an appearance and stand his trial before the Vehmgericht, he had the right to produce thirty witnesses to prove his innocence; while the accuser might produce an equal number to prove the contrary. Both sides had the right to be represented by their lawyers. In case of conviction a right of appeal lay to the Secret Tribunal, which was usually held at Dortmund.
While the trial was proceeding a naked sword and a withy halter lay on the table before the judge, symbolizing per¬ haps his powers of administering justice and the penalty entailed by guilt. An analogous piece of symbolism was made use of in the case of an execution by order of the Verne, when a knife was stuck in the tree on which the criminal had been hanged, to show by whose authority his life had been taken.
When rough and ready justice was thus surrounded by the emblems of sudden death, it is little wonder that the Verne came to be more dreaded than the Emperor. It is on record that on one occasion it even dared to claim juris¬ diction over the Emperor Frederick III himself, when in the year 1470 three of the Stuhlherren summoned him and his Chancellor to appear before them — of course, with as good a prospect of being obeyed as had Owen Glendower when he called spirits from the vasty deep. Still the incident shows that the right of citation had begun to be mis¬ used; the Verne had degenerated owing to this abuse, and also because of the improper character of some of its officials.
Reforms took place from time to time, the most notable being known as the Arensberg Reformation and the Osnaburg Regulations, which removed some of the abuses
THE VEHMGERICHT 67
and modified the power of the tribunals.1 The civil institu¬ tions of the Emperors Maximilian and Charles V, however, finally rendered all further proceedings of the Verne quite unnecessary. It lingered on all the same. The last regular Verne court was held in Celle in 1568; but shadowy juris¬ diction and authority continued to be exercised spas¬ modically, and it was not until legislation by the French invaders in 1811 abolished the last free court at Gemen in Munster that the curious institution can be said to have really passed out of existence.
1 In the year 1371 the Emperor Karl IV granted a code of laws to West¬ phalia, and by this code the Vehm courts were recognised, and the punish¬ ment of evil-doers handed over to them. According to Erode, op. cit., this date can be taken as marking the establishment of the power of the Vehm in fixed channels, all its proceedings prior to this having been evolutionary.