Like all other pre-dreadnoughts built at the turn of the century, Braunschweig was quickly made obsolete by the launching of the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1906; as a result, her career as a front-line battleship was cut short.

Surpassed by new dreadnought battleships, Braunschweig was decommissioned in 1913, but reactivated a year later following the outbreak of World War I.

Braunschweig served in the reformed Reichsmarine, operating as the flagship of naval forces assigned to the North Sea.

The ship was decommissioned again in January 1926 and was stricken from the Navy Directory in March 1931, hulked, and subsequently broken up for scrap.

[2][3] Though the Braunschweig class marked a significant improvement over earlier German battleships, its design fell victim to the rapid pace of technological development in the early 1900s.

[4] Dreadnought's revolutionary design rendered every capital ship of the German navy obsolete, including Braunschweig.

[6] Braunschweig's armament consisted of a main battery of four 28 cm (11 in) SK L/40 guns in twin-gun turrets,[b] one fore and one aft of the central superstructure.

The Braunschweig class, which took its name from the lead ship, included four other vessels: Elsass, Hessen, Preussen, and Lothringen.

She had already been assigned to II Squadron of the main fleet on 25 September, taking the place of the old coastal defense ship Odin, though she did not formally join the unit until after trials concluded in late December.

[15] Braunschweig resumed deputy flagship duties on 25 September 1907, when KAdm Adolf Paschen transferred his flag from Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, which was to be decommissioned.

More sailors arrived on 8 December, allowing her to return to active service with V Division of III Squadron, under the command of KAdm Ehrhard Schmidt.

The ship's return to service proved to be short-lived; on 30 July her crew was reduced a second time in Kiel, now to man the new battleship König Albert.

[18] The next day KAdm Hermann Alberts, the deputy commander of the squadron, came aboard the ship, making her his flagship.

[16] The training exercises were interrupted on 26 August, when the ships were sent to rescue the stranded light cruiser Magdeburg, which had run aground off the island of Odensholm in the eastern Baltic.

[19] Starting on 3 September, IV Squadron, assisted by the armored cruiser Blücher, conducted a sweep into the Baltic.

The following day, Prince Heinrich, the commander-in-chief of naval forces in the Baltic, came aboard Braunschweig, making her his flagship for the operation, which was also to include the older pre-dreadnought battleships of the V Battle Squadron.

[22] The next day, following the loss of the minelaying cruiser SMS Albatross in the Baltic, the IV Squadron ships were transferred to reinforce the German naval forces in the area.

[22] On 11 and 19 July, German cruisers, with the IV Squadron ships in support, conducted sweeps in the Baltic, though without engaging Russian forces.

[26] A second attempt was made on 16 August; this time, Braunschweig remained outside the Gulf while the dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen took over the task of dealing with Slava.

She returned to Kiel the next day, and on 12 October was deployed back to Libau to guard the port, along with Elsass and Mecklenburg.

[22] On 12 October, the British submarine E18 fired a single torpedo at Braunschweig, though it failed to hit its target.

By this point in the war, the Navy was encountering difficulties in manning more important vessels, and the insufficient underwater protection of the older German battleships rendered them unusable in the Baltic, owing to the threat from submarines.

Braunschweig, however, became the flagship of VAdm Friedrich Schultz, the Commander of Reconnaissance Forces in the Eastern Baltic Sea.

On 5 January 1916, Braunschweig, Mecklenburg, the light cruiser Berlin, and the X Torpedo-boat Flotilla left Libau for Kiel before continuing on to Hamburg.

[32] The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war, specified that Germany was permitted to retain six battleships of the "Deutschland or Lothringen types.

Work was finished and her crew was completed on 1 March 1922, at which point she replaced the light cruiser Hamburg as the flagship of the Marinestation der Nordsee (Naval Station of the North Sea), then commanded by KAdm Konrad Mommsen.

From late August to 15 September, the ships of the Marinestation der Nordsee held joint maneuvers with those from the Marinestation der Ostsee (Naval Station of the Baltic Sea), and during these Reichspräsident (President of Germany) Friedrich Ebert came aboard the ship to observe the exercises on 5 and 6 September.

[9] The ship's program followed the same pattern as the previous year, with visits to foreign ports in July; Braunschweig stopped in Helsinki, Finland, and Gothenburg, Sweden, during her trip.

On 15 October, VAdm Hans Zenker, then the Oberbefehlshaber der Seestreitkräfte (O.d.S—Commander of Naval Forces), reorganized the fleet structure, disbanding the North Sea and Baltic commands and replacing them with organizations based on ship type.