Career
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. 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.