He was the uncle of his predecessor Karl Ludwig Friedrich, and his death marked the end of the Zähringen line of the House of Baden.

The succession then went to the children of the morganatic second marriage of Grand Duke Karl Friedrich and Louise Karoline Geyer von Geyersberg, who was created Countess of Hochberg in the Austrian nobility at the personal request of Karl Friedrich.

After Ludwig's death, there was much discussion about a mysterious seventeen-year-old man named Kaspar Hauser, who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in 1828.

Seventeen years previously, the first son of the future Grand Duke Karl and his French wife Stéphanie de Beauharnais died under what were later portrayed as mysterious circumstances.

Ludwig had one surviving illegitimate daughter by his mistress Katharina Werner (created Countess of Langenstein and Gondelsheim in 1818), Countess Louise von Langenstein und Gondelsheim (1825–1900) who married in 1848 Swedish aristocrat Carl Israel, Count Douglas (1824–1898).