So while there were Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon and Württemberg armies, there was a single Imperial Navy, the only formation under the direct authority of the German Reich beside the colonial Schutztruppe forces.

When in 1897 Konteradmiral Alfred von Tirpitz succeeded State Secretary Friedrich von Hollmann, who had resigned in a dispute on the naval budget, he made the Naval Office the power base in his campaign to build a great German High Seas Fleet to encounter Britain's Royal Navy.

According to the theories of US admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan and his book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, the "Tirpitz Plan" was established jointly with Foreign State Secretary Bernhard von Bülow and, in interaction with the British Naval Defence Act 1889, fuelled the Anglo-German naval arms race.

Tirpitz had urged for the dissolution of the Imperial Naval High Command in 1899, which gave him even more power but proved as fatal in World War I.

After the war, the Imperial Naval Office was disestablished on 15 July 1919, when by decree of Reich President Friedrich Ebert its responsibilities were assigned to the Admiralty Staff, which was transformed into the Marineleitung agency of the German Reichswehr Ministry in 1920.