He was born at Padingbüttel, and received his medical education at Göttingen, where one of his teachers was his uncle Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck.

Six years later he succeeded Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach (1794–1847) as Director of the Clinical Institute for Surgery and Ophthalmology at the Charité in Berlin, and remained there until 1882, when failing health forced him to retire.

He was in Orléans at the end of 1870 after the city had been taken by the Prussians and in his capacity as surgeon or as consultant tended to the wounded men with whom every public building was packed.

He also utilized the opportunities for instruction that arose, and the Militär-ärztliche Gesellschaft, which met twice a week for some months, and in the discussions of which every surgeon in the city, irrespective of nationality, was invited to take part, was mainly formed by his energy and enthusiasm.

Under his tutelage at the Charite in Berlin, he conceived and developed a system whereby new medical graduates would live at the hospital as they gradually assumed a greater role in the day-to-day care and supervision of surgical patients.