Thüringen was involved in the heavy night fighting at Jutland, including the destruction of the armored cruiser HMS Black Prince.

[1] The ship also saw action against the Imperial Russian Navy in the Baltic Sea, where she participated in the unsuccessful first incursion into the Gulf of Riga in August 1915.

[7] The ship's secondary battery consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 guns, all of which were mounted in casemates in the side of the upper deck.

Following her completion, six pontoon barges were attached to the new battleship to reduce her draft to allow her to be towed down the Weser River to the North Sea.

[1] Thüringen, named for Thuringia, a state in central Germany, was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 1 June 1911, less than three years after work commenced.

[14] During the last peacetime cruise of the Imperial Navy, the fleet conducted drills off Skagen before proceeding to the Norwegian fjords on 25 July.

[17] During the first year of the war, the future anti-Nazi Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller served aboard the ship as an officer.

That evening, the German battle fleet of some twelve dreadnoughts—including Thüringen and her three sisters—and eight pre-dreadnoughts came to within 10 nmi (19 km; 12 mi) of an isolated squadron of six British battleships.

As a result, Wilhelm II removed Ingenohl from his post and replaced him with Admiral Hugo von Pohl on 2 February.

Thüringen and the rest of the fleet then remained in port until 4 August, when I Squadron returned to the Baltic for another round of training maneuvers.

[11] The assault force included the eight I Squadron battleships, the battlecruisers Von der Tann, Moltke, and Seydlitz, several light cruisers, 32 destroyers and 13 minesweepers.

The dreadnoughts Nassau and Posen were detached on 16 August to escort the minesweepers and to destroy Slava, though they failed to sink the old battleship.

[11] On 23–24 October, the High Seas Fleet undertook its last major offensive operation under the command of Pohl, though it ended without contact with British forces.

[25] Scheer proposed a more aggressive policy designed to force a confrontation with the British Grand Fleet; he received approval from the Kaiser in February.

[11] During Scheer's next operation, Thüringen supported a raid on the English coast on 24 April 1916 conducted by the German battlecruiser force.

At this point, Scheer, who had been warned of the sortie of the Grand Fleet from its base in Scapa Flow, also withdrew to safer German waters.

The opposing ships began an artillery duel that saw the destruction of Indefatigable, shortly after 17:00,[30] and Queen Mary, less than half an hour later.

[31] By this time, the German battlecruisers were steaming south to draw the British ships toward the main body of the High Seas Fleet.

[34] The British destroyers Nestor and Nomad, which had been disabled earlier in the engagement, laid directly in the path of the advancing High Seas Fleet.

[37] Thüringen fired twenty main battery rounds at Malaya, also unsuccessfully, over seven minutes at a range of 14,100 yd (12,900 m) before conforming to a 180-degree turn ordered by Scheer to disengage from the British fleet.

[39] An hour later, the leading units of the German line encountered British light forces and a violent firefight at close range ensued.

[41] Despite the ferocity of the night fighting, the High Seas Fleet punched through the British destroyer forces and reached Horns Reef by 04:00 on 1 June.

[42] A few hours later, the fleet arrived in the Jade; Thüringen, Helgoland, Nassau, and Westfalen took up defensive positions in the outer roadstead and four undamaged III Squadron ships anchored just outside the entrance locks to Wilhelmshaven.

[47] On the approach to the English coast during the action of 19 August 1916, Scheer turned north after receiving a false report from a zeppelin about a British unit in the area.

[48] As a result, the bombardment was not carried out, and by 14:35 on 19 August, Scheer had been warned of the Grand Fleet's approach and so turned his forces around and retreated to German ports.

[49] On 25–26 September, Thüringen and the rest of I Squadron covered an advance conducted by the second commander of the torpedo-boat flotillas (II Führer der Torpedoboote) to the Terschelling Bank.

[50] Scheer conducted another fleet operation on 18–20 October in the direction of the Dogger Bank, though rudder damage prevented Thüringen from participating.

During Operation Albion, the amphibious assault on the Russian-held islands in the Gulf of Riga, Thüringen and her three sisters were moved to the Danish straits to block any possible British attempt to intervene.

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

[10] The fate of the eight remaining German battleships was determined in the Treaty of Versailles, which stated that the ships were to be disarmed and surrendered to the governments of the principal Allied powers.