The Kolberg class was a group of four light cruisers built for the German Imperial Navy and used during the First World War.

The ships were armed with a main battery of twelve 10.5 cm SK L/45 guns and had a design speed of 25.5 knots (47.2 km/h; 29.3 mph).

At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Augsburg was deployed to the Baltic, while Kolberg, Mainz, and Cöln remained in the North Sea.

Both ships survived the war; Kolberg was ceded to France, where she was renamed Colmar and served in the French Navy until 1927.

The hulls contained thirteen watertight compartments and a double bottom that extended for fifty percent of the length of the keel.

The ships had a standard crew of 18 officers and 349 enlisted men and carried a number of smaller vessels, including one picket boat, one barge, one cutter, two yawls, and two dinghies.

[2] Kolberg was equipped with two sets of Melms & Pfenniger steam turbines driving four three-bladed propellers 2.25 m (7 ft 5 in) in diameter.

Mainz was powered by two AEG-Curtiss turbines driving a pair of three-bladed screws 3.45 m (11 ft 4 in) in diameter.

In 1916, Kolberg and Augsburg were equipped with supplementary oil-firing to increase the burn rate of the coal-fired boilers;[1] Mainz and Cöln had been sunk by that time.

These were powered by fifteen coal-fired Marine water-tube boilers, which were trunked into three evenly spaced funnels.

[1] The ships were armed with a main battery of twelve 10.5 cm SK L/45 guns in single pedestal mounts.

[1] Kolberg was ordered under the contract name Ersatz Greif and was laid down in early 1908 at the Schichau-Werke shipyard in Danzig under construction number 814.

[3] After their commissioning, Kolberg, Mainz, and Cöln were assigned to the II Scouting Group, part of the reconnaissance forces of the High Seas Fleet.

At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the II Scouting Group was deployed to a patrol line based on the island of Heligoland.

Kolberg was stationed in port during the attack, and steamed out to support the beleaguered German forces, but the British had departed by the time she reached the scene.

[8] Kolberg continued to serve with the reconnaissance forces in the North Sea, including seeing action at the raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in December 1914,[9] where she laid a minefield off the British coast, and the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915.

The ships were involved in a variety of operations, including minesweeping, and screening for the battleships König and Kronprinz while they destroyed Russian opposition in the Gulf.

[5] Colmar saw one tour on colonial duty in Asia in 1924, where she participated in a multinational operation to protect foreign nationals from Chinese unrest in Shanghai.