Born in Kupferdreh (now Essen, Germany), Johanna May was brought up in a Lutheran, nationalistic family alongside a sister.

While Koegel preferred to keep discipline through beatings, Langefeld believed emphasizing strict protocol was the superior method for controlling female prisoners.

[1]: 52–53  When Koegel entreated Heinrich Himmler to authorize the use of a wooden horse to aid in beatings, Langefeld protested to no avail.

Acting on my own initiative, I simply put the women's camp under his jurisdiction.During the visit of Himmler on 18 July 1942, Langefeld tried to get him to annul this order.

In fact, Rudolf Höss admitted after the war that “the Reichsführer SS absolutely refused” his order and that he wished “a women's camp to be commanded by a woman”.

Two weeks later, Langefeld sustained an injury of her meniscus and required a cartilage operation in the Hohenlychen SS Sanatorium near Ravensbrück.

During her stay there, she went to see Oswald Pohl, the chief of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, in Berlin-Lichterfelde, and convinced him to transfer her back to Ravensbrück.

[2] On 20 December 1945, Langefeld was arrested by the U.S. Army, and in September 1946, was extradited to the Polish judiciary preparing a trial in Kraków against SS personnel in Auschwitz.

Though she was raised with the belief women should be subordinate to men and was attracted to Hitler for his endorsement of such ideas, she also pushed against patriarchal relationships in her professional life.

[1]: 2  Growing up, she idolized Eleonore Prochaska, a historical German woman who dressed as a man to fight in the War of the Sixth Coalition.