SMS Karlsruhe was a light cruiser of the Königsberg class, built for the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) during World War I.

The new cruiser was laid down in 1914 at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel, launched in January 1916, and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in November 1916.

The new ships were broadly similar to the earlier cruisers, with only minor alterations in the arrangement of some components, including the forward broadside guns, which were raised a level to reduce their tendency to be washed out in heavy seas.

Another operation took place on 6 April; Karlsruhe, the light cruiser Graudenz, and the 2nd Torpedo-boat Half-Flotilla sortied to the Amrun Bank to rescue the submarine U-22, which had been damaged and needed assistance returning to port.

The Admiralstab (Navy High Command) planned Operation Albion to seize the Baltic island of Ösel, and specifically the Russian gun batteries on the Sworbe Peninsula.

On 18 September, the order was issued for a joint operation with the army to capture Ösel and Moon Islands; the primary naval component comprised the flagship, the battlecruiser Moltke, along with the III and IV Battle Squadrons of the High Seas Fleet.

On 26 September, she helped carry infantry units to Putziger Wiek, where the men were loaded onto the capital ships of the invasion fleet.

Karlsruhe thereafter returned to Libau on 2 October, where she embarked two officers and seventy-eight enlisted men from the Saxon Radfahr-Bataillonen (Bicycle Battalion).

[10] The men aboard Karlsruhe went ashore in Tagga Bay that morning; she left the area in company with ten transport ships on 17 October and escorted them back to Libau.

[9] In early April 1918, Karlsruhe supported the laying of a defensive minefield in the North Sea that was laid in preparation for a major fleet operation later that month.

While steaming off the Utsira Lighthouse in southern Norway, Moltke had a serious accident with her machinery, which led Scheer to break off the operation and return to port by 25 April.

[9][13] From 10 to 13 May, Karlsruhe and the rest of II Scouting Group escorted the minelayer Senta while the latter vessel laid a defensive minefield to block British submarines form operating in the German Bight.

Karlsruhe, Nürnberg, and Graudenz were to bombard targets in Flanders while Pillau, Cöln, Dresden, and Königsberg were to attack merchant shipping in the Thames estuary, to draw out the British Grand Fleet.

[15] Admirals Reinhard Scheer and Franz von Hipper intended to inflict as much damage as possible on the British navy, to secure a better bargaining position for Germany, whatever the cost to the fleet.

[16] Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, most of the High Seas Fleet's ships, under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, were interned in the British naval base in Scapa Flow.

[2] The German ships, which had been escorted across the North Sea by the Grand Fleet, stopped initially in the Firth of Forth on 21 November, where over the following days, they were moved to Scapa Flow in smaller groups.

Von Reuter believed that the British intended to seize the German ships on 21 June 1919, which was the deadline for Germany to have signed the peace treaty.

[20] In 2017, marine archaeologists from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology conducted extensive surveys of Karlsruhe and nine other wrecks in the area, including six other German and three British warships.

[21] The wreck at some point came into the ownership of the firm Scapa Flow Salvage, which sold the rights to the vessel to Tommy Clark, a diving contractor, in 1981.

[22] The wreck of Karlsruhe ultimately sold for £8,500 to a private buyer, while the three dreadnoughts Clark had also placed for sale were purchased by a company from the Middle East for £25,500 apiece.