SMS Elsass

SMS Elsass. was the second of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the Braunschweig class in the German Imperial Navy, laid down in 1901 and commissioned 1904. She was named for the German province of Elsass, now the French region of Alsace. Her sister ships were Braunschweig, Hessen, Preussen and Lothringen.

The ship served in the II Squadron of the German fleet after commissioning, though by the outbreak of World War I, she had been moved to the IV Squadron. Elsass saw action in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy. In August 1915, she participated in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, during which she engaged the Russian battleship Slava. In 1916, however, she was placed in reserve because of crew shortages, and spent the remainder of the war as a training ship.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, she was retained after the end of the war and was modernized in 1923–24. Elsass served in the Reichsmarine with the surface fleet until 1930, when she was again placed in reserve. She was stricken in 1931 and used for a short time as a hulk in Wilhelmshaven. The out-dated battleship was sold to Norddeutscher Lloyd in late 1935 and was broken up for scrap the following year.