These lasted with minor interruptions until September 1941, when she was assigned to the Baltic Fleet and tasked with supporting German operations during the invasion of the Soviet Union.

While undergoing repairs in Kiel, Emden was repeatedly damaged by British bombers and later run aground outside the harbor to prevent her from sinking.

[3] The Navy hoped to finish the ship as quickly as possible and to keep costs to a minimum, and so requested permission from the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control to use steam turbines, boilers, and conning towers from scrapped vessels to complete Ersatz Niobe.

Her hull was constructed with longitudinal steel frames and incorporated seventeen watertight compartments and a double bottom that extended for 56 percent of the length of the keel.

[3] Emden was powered by two sets of Brown, Boveri & Co. geared steam turbines; they drove a pair of three-bladed screws that were 3.75 m (12.3 ft) in diameter.

[3] The ship's main battery was to have been eight 15 cm SK L/55 guns in twin turrets, but the Allied disarmament authority refused to permit this armament.

Admiral Hans Zenker gave a speech at her launching, and the ship was christened by the widow of Karl von Müller, who had commanded the original Emden during World War I.

In August and September 1926, she took part in annual fleet maneuvers, and in October she returned to the shipyard again to have her aft funnel increased in height to match the forward one.

She visited ports in Japan before crossing the northern Pacific Ocean to Alaska and then steamed down the western coast of North America, calling in various harbors along the way.

By this time, the ship had come under the command of Korvettenkapitän (Corvette Captain) Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, who had come aboard in September.

The ship steamed down to the Mediterranean Sea and stopped in Istanbul, Turkey, before traveling south through the Suez Canal, across the Indian Ocean to the Dutch East Indies, and then to Australia.

She steamed into the Atlantic and stopped in Madeira before crossing over to tour several ports in the Caribbean, including Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, New Orleans and Charleston in the US, Kingston, Jamaica, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Emden then visited numerous ports in Southeast Asia, China, Japan, and the Pacific, including Bangkok, Victoria, Labuan, Manila, Nanking, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Osaka, Nii-jima, Tsuruga, Hakodate, Otaru, Yokohama, and Guam.

The first such voyage began on 10 November, and included stops in Santa Cruz de La Palma, Cape Town and East London, Porto Amelia in Portuguese Mozambique, Mombasa, Kenya, Victoria, Seychelles, Trincomalee, and Cochin.

On the way back home, she entered the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and visited Alexandria, Cartagena, Ponta Delgada, Lisbon, and Vigo, before anchoring in the Schillig roadstead outside Wilhelmshaven on 12 June 1935.

[13] Emden started her sixth major training cruise on 23 October, under the command of Kapitän zur See (KzS—Captain at Sea) Johannes Bachmann, which went to the Americas.

She crossed the Atlantic by way of the Azores, toured the West Indies and visited Venezuela, before passing through the Panama Canal to Guayaquil, Ecuador on 25 December.

Another trip through the Suez Canal brought the ship back to the Mediterranean; she stopped in Algeciras, Spain on 15 April 1937, passed through the English Channel three days later, and reached Voslapp, Germany on the 19th.

There, she joined the German naval forces that had been sent to the non-intervention patrols enforcing the arms embargo on Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

There, she stopped in a variety of foreign ports, including Massawa in Italian Eritrea, Colombo in British Ceylon, Mormugao, India, and Belawan and Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies.

There, she stopped in Hamilton from 30 August to 3 September; the visit proved to be an unfriendly one, as international opinion had turned decidedly against Nazi Germany during the Sudeten crisis.

She stopped in Funchal from 10 to 15 September on the way back to Wilhelmshaven, though before she arrived the Munich Agreement that ended the crisis had been signed, and so international tensions decreased enough to allow Emden to continue the training cruise.

The barrier stretched across the German Bight from the coast of the Netherlands to the Jutland peninsula; the purpose of the minefield was to secure the seaward flank of the Westwall.

[17] Borisenko states that Lightoller's aircraft in fact hit the cruiser's port board, while the bombs it had released exploded in the water on her starboard side, causing additional superficial damage.

[18][19][20] As Germany assembled forces for the invasion of Norway, codenamed Operation Weserübung, Emden was allocated to Group 5, which was tasked with seizing Oslo.

The following day, Emden embarked 600 soldiers and their equipment in Swinemünde before proceeding to the collection point for the invasion fleet, Strander Bucht outside Kiel.

The element of surprise was lost, however, and on entering the narrows in the fjord, Blücher was engaged and sunk by Norwegian coastal defenses at Oscarsborg Fortress in the Battle of Drøbak Sound.

Emden entered the port on the morning of 10 April, thereafter serving as a joint communications center to coordinate Kriegsmarine, Wehrmacht, and Luftwaffe operations.

Emden had her guns reinstalled and she embarked the remains of Paul von Hindenburg and his wife, which had been disinterred to prevent them from falling into the hands of the advancing Soviet Army.

To prevent her capture by the advancing Allied armies, her crew destroyed the ship with explosives on 3 May, five days before the end of World War II in Europe.