Otto von Camphausen

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Otto von Camphausen (around 1860)

Otto Camphausen , from 1896 von Camphausen (born October 21, 1812 in Hünshoven , Département de la Roer , French Empire , † May 18, 1896 in Berlin ), was Prussian finance minister and Rhenish liberal .

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Otto Camphausen was born as a citizen of the French Empire during the annexation of the Rhineland by Napoleon Bonaparte and did not become Prussian until 1815 . He studied law and entered civil service in the fall of 1834. He dealt primarily with commercial and financial issues. From 1837 he was a government assessor in Magdeburg , Koblenz and Trier . In 1844 he was appointed government councilor in Trier and in 1845 as a lecturer in the Prussian Ministry of Finance. There he dealt with property tax and in 1847 drafted a bill for income tax .

In 1849 and from 1850 to 1892 he was a member of the Second Chamber and in 1850 of the Erfurt Volkshaus . He joined the moderately liberal party. In 1854 he succeeded August Friedrich Bloch as President of Maritime Trade and on October 26, 1869 Minister of Finance. The state budget at that time showed a deficit of five million  thalers . He was able to reduce this deficit in the following years and even generate a surplus after the Franco-Prussian War . With the excess money, he used the excess money to reduce national debts, abolished some taxes (meal and slaughter tax), increased civil servants' salaries and financed the construction of public buildings.

Camphausen's grave in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof Berlin

When Albrecht Graf von Roon resigned on November 9, 1873 , Camphausen became Vice President of the Prussian State Ministry.

After the surplus in the state budget disappeared, Camphausen was blamed for the economic decline and was released on March 23, 1878 at his request.

Shortly before his death, on January 18, 1896, he was awarded the Black Eagle Order , the highest Prussian order, with which the automatic elevation to the personal nobility was connected.

Camphausen was the brother of the Prussian Prime Minister Ludolf Camphausen .

The Camphausen mine and subsequently the nearby Camphausen settlement were named after him.

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