Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen
Ludolf Camphausen
Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen (1803 in Geilenkirchen - 1890 in Cologne)
In 1848, Ludolf Camphausen stepped suddenly from his banker's desk
at Cologne to the presidential chair of the Ministry of State at Berlin,
being called by King Frederick William IV. to succeed Count Arnim-Boitzenburg
as prime minister, on 29 March. Ludolf
availed himself largely of his younger brother's (Otto) splendid business
talents, and the two might, indeed, have succeeded at the time in tiding over
this most critical epoch in the constitutional history of the land, had they
not had to encounter the deep insincerity of the monarch on the one side,
and the (very excusable) profound distrust of the Radical and Progressist
majority of the Assembly on the other side.
Both Ludolf and Otto Camphausen were moderate Liberals —
too honestly Liberal
to suit the views of the king and of the reactionary feudalist clique
around him, and too honestly Conservative for the impatience of the men
of progress. Less than three short months sufficed to convince Ludolf
Camphausen of this fact, and already on 20 June he tendered
his resignation to the king.
One month after, at the end of July, 1848,
Ludolf Camphausen was sent as Prussian representative to the Frankfurt Parliament. Here he remained till April, 1849,
when he finally resigned, and went back to his banking business at Cologne,
a wiser and sadder man, thoroughly disenchanted of the alluring illusions of
power and office.
References
- G. L. M. Strauss, Men Who Have Made the New German Empire, Vol. II, London: Tinsley Brothers, 1875, pp. 289–290.
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