SMS Graudenz was the lead ship of her class of light cruisers. She had one sister ship, SMS Regensburg. The ship was built by the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel, laid down in 1912 and commissioned into the High Seas Fleet in August 1914, days after the outbreak of World War I. She was named for the then-German town of Graudenz (now Grudziądz, Poland).