She was built at Hamburg and was launched on 10 June 1911 and commissioned on 15 October 1912, when she became the flagship of the Hochseeflotte (High Seas Fleet) until 14 March 1917, participating in the Battle of Jutland. She was scuttled at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys on 21 June 1919, and subsequently broken up for scrap on-site (the other four Kaiser class ships were salvaged and broken up at Rosyth between 1929 and 1937).