SMS Luchs was the fourth member of the Iltis class of gunboats built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Luchs, along with Tiger, was armed with a main battery of two 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns, had a top speed of 13.5 knots (25.0 km/h; 15.5 mph), and could cruise for more than 2,500 nautical miles (4,630 km; 2,880 mi).

Initially planned to serve on the American Station, Luchs was reassigned to the East Asia Squadron in response to the Boxer Uprising in Qing China in 1900.

After the start of World War I in July 1914, Luchs was disarmed; her guns and part of her crew were used to equip the steamer Prinz Eitel Friedrich as an auxiliary cruiser.

[6] But already on 30 June, Luchs' orders were changed and she was diverted to join the German naval forces in the Far East responding to the Boxer Uprising in Qing China.

The squadron commander, aboard his flagship the armored cruiser Fürst Bismarck, ordered Luchs to go to Guangzhou to secure German interests in southern China during the Boxer Uprising.

[7] In late February 1901, Luchs was relieved by her sister ship Jaguar, allowing the former to sail to Tanggu to assist in the withdrawal of the East Asia Expeditionary Corps.

[8] In February, Tiger repeated the river cruise to Hankou, this time carrying Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Friedrich von Baudissin, the squadron's deputy commander.

She spent the next year touring southern Chinese ports, and only returned to Shanghai for her next annual repair period that lasted from June to August 1904.

[5] In 1905, Luchs conducted her normal routine of peacetime cruises through the East Asia station, including picking up the new squadron commander, KAdm Alfred Breusing in Bangkok, Siam, in November.

In January 1908, Luchs embarked the squadron commander and his staff in the mouth of the Mekong river in southern French Indochina and took them to Siam to make a formal visit to King Chulalongkorn in Bangkok.

The rest of the year passed uneventfully for Luchs, with the exception of the November arrival of KK Karl von Hornhardt, the ship's next captain.

In January, Scharnhorst, Leipzig, and Luchs went on a tour of East Asian ports, including Bangkok, Manila, and stops in Sumatra and North Borneo.

In January 1911, the squadron commander—KAdm Erich Gühler—died of typhus, and Luchs sent men to escort his body from the consulate in Hong Kong to the Norddeutscher Lloyd steamship Bülow to be taken back to Germany.

In late 1912 and early 1913, she made another cruise in the Dutch East Indies before returning to various ports in China to continue to guard against unrest during the revolution.

Following the outbreak of World War I at the end of the month, Luchs and Tiger were disarmed to equip the Norddeutscher Lloyd post steamer Prinz Eitel Friedrich so it could be used as an auxiliary cruiser to raid enemy merchant shipping.