List of protected cruisers of Germany

The German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) built a series of protected cruisers in the 1880s and 1890s, starting with the two ships of the Irene class. The Navy only completed two additional classes of protected cruisers, comprising six more ships: the unique Kaiserin Augusta, and the five Victoria Louise-class ships. The type was then superseded by the armored cruiser at the turn of the century, beginning with Fürst Bismarck.^[1] Because of limited budgets in the pre-Tirpitz era, the German Navy attempted to build vessels that could serve as overseas cruisers and scouts for the fleet, though the ships were not satisfactory.^[2] The protected cruiser designs generally copied developments in foreign navies. The Victoria Louise design resembled contemporary German battleships, which favored smaller-caliber main guns and more secondary guns than on their foreign counterparts.^[3]

Most of the German protected cruisers served on overseas stations throughout their careers, primarily in the East Asia Squadron in the 1890s and 1900s. Prinzess Wilhelm participated in the seizure of the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory in November 1897, which was used as the primary base for the East Asia Squadron. Kaiserin Augusta, Hertha, and Hansa assisted in the suppression of the Boxer Uprising in China in 1900, and Vineta saw action during the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, where she bombarded several Venezuelan fortresses. Irene, Prinzess Wilhelm, and Kaiserin Augusta were relegated to secondary duties in the 1910s, while the Victoria Louise class was used to train naval cadets in the 1900s. All eight ships were broken up for scrap in the early 1920s.

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