The Gazelle class was a group of ten light cruisers built for the Imperial German Navy at the turn of the 20th century.

They were armed with a main battery of ten 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and a pair of torpedo tubes, and were capable of a speed of 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph).

Niobe was sold to Yugoslavia in 1925 and renamed Dalmacija, and the rest of the cruisers were withdrawn from service by the end of the 1920s and used for secondary duties or broken up for scrap.

Through the 1870s and early 1880s, Germany built two types of cruising vessels: small, fast, but lightly armed avisos suitable for service as fleet scouts and larger, long-ranged screw corvettes capable of patrolling the German colonial empire.

Beginning in the mid-1880s, General Leo von Caprivi, the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, embarked on a construction program to modernize Germany's cruiser force.

Then-Captain Alfred von Tirpitz, at the time the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine—OKM), wrote a summary of 1894 fleet maneuvers that included what he believed to be the necessary characteristics of a new small cruiser.

These included a top speed of at least 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), armament sufficient to permit them to engage enemy fleet scouts, and an armor deck to protect the ship's propulsion machinery.

[3] The General Department of the Imperial Naval Office (Reichsmarineamt—RMA) issued a call for proposals on 10 May 1895 for the next cruiser, provisionally titled "G".

As a result, the next vessel would largely repeat Gazelle's design, though new machinery developed by the Germaniawerft shipyard secured the necessary increase of speed to 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph).

[8] According to the historian Eric Osborne, "[t]he light cruisers of the Gazelle-class established a trend for future ships of this general design...[they] carried little or no armor, the chief asset being speed.

"[9] Indeed, all future light cruisers built by the Imperial Navy through the Dresden class of 1906 generally followed the same pattern, with few fundamental changes.

The first three ships carried 500 tonnes (490 long tons) of coal, which gave them a range of 3,570 nautical miles (6,610 km; 4,110 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

The next four vessels carried slightly more, at 560 t (550 long tons), which allowed them to cruise to the approximately same range, 3,560 nmi (6,590 km; 4,100 mi), at the higher speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).

The last three ships carried 700 t (690 long tons) of coal, which substantially increased their cruising radius, to 4,400 nmi (8,100 km; 5,100 mi) at 12 knots.

Gazelle had three 45 cm (17.7 in) tubes with eight torpedoes; one was submerged in the hull in the bow and two were mounted in deck launchers on the broadside.

[5] The ten ships of the Gazelle class were built between 1897 and 1904, at various German dockyards, including private firms and government shipyards.

[16] They both saw action at the Battle of Heligoland Bight on 28 August 1914; Frauenlob engaged and badly damaged the British cruiser HMS Arethusa, while Ariadne was sunk by several battlecruisers.

The ship ran aground in the Adriatic in December 1943 and was destroyed by a pair of British Motor Torpedo Boats.