Femegericht

(Feme justice)

   In medieval Germany vigilante groups, dis-tressed by the era s ineffective legal system, assumed responsibility for swift justice.* The practice was known as Femegericht (also Vehmgericht), roughly equivalent to "folk justice. During the unstable early years of the Republic (especially 1920-1922), the more radical of the Freikorps* units revived Feme-gericht to dispense with those whom they deemed traitors. Although Hermann Ehrhardt's* Organisation Consul* (OC) was not alone in the endeavor, it was the most notorious advocate of Femegericht and was known for its celebrated victims. OC members shot and killed the leader of Bavaria s USPD, Karl Gareis, on 9 June 1921; they murdered Matthias Erzberger* on 26 August 1921; they attacked former Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann* on 4 June 1922 with prussic acid, attempting to blind him; and they so severely bludgeoned Maximilian Harden* on 3 July 1922 that he never recuperated. Carl Severing* was saved when a plot to kill him was uncovered. But OC s most eminent victim was Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau,* murdered in Berlin* on 24 June 1922.

   The perpetrators of Femegericht did not limit themselves to the famous. The Justice Ministry estimated in 1923 that assassination* had claimed 354 lives between 1919 and June 1922. Victims generally fell into three categories: (1) key members of the Republic; (2) civilians who had disclosed weapons caches to the authorities; and (3) former comrades. The Bavarian Einwohnerwehr was regularly implicated in the murders of individuals who might have exposed the location of illegal arms. At the 1928 trial of Gerhard Rossbach* it was revealed that 200 political murders had been carried out in Upper Silesia* alone.

   REFERENCES:Diehl, Paramilitary Politics; Ingo Müller, Hitler's Justice; Howard Stern, " Organisation Consul ; Waite, Vanguard ofNazism.