I have done a lot of drawings based on the British Hawkins class cruiser hull. The Hawkins class was built to counter German raiders on the high seas. So I put my German hat on and tried to figure out what a Medium sized cruiser could look like with a completion date expected to be 1918-19. As normal with a raider the ship would have to be able to defeat the escort that might be guarding a convoy on the high seas. These would generally be light cruisers of the Town type or older armoured cruisers (County type) that would have the range.
I ended up with a 500+ foot cruiser armed with 8 x 170mm. The German 170mm was better than the British 6" and 7.5" that would arm the escort cruisers listed above. The 170mm gun and turrets were already available on the older pre-dreadnought battleships which could have been used to speed up production to get the ships to sea if the type had been proceeded with.
It was decided that although the 170mm gun was available, it would not guarantee superiority against the types of cruiser that these two ships might encounter. Thus the second design with 6x8.2" (210mm) was laid down in January 1917 as the Germanic States Admiralty looked for raider options to break up the British Fleet, chasing these ships around the North Atlantic. With two of the six gun versions laid down in January 1917, two of the eight gun versions, the Von Brandenburg Class ships were laid down in May 1917 (see Admiral von Brandenburg), one being completed for the new Weimar Republic in 1920 the other was cancelled and scrapped.
After quite a bit of discussion on the original design with its 170mm guns, I decided to add further drawings with 210mm guns. First was a six 210mm gun version, then an eight 210mm gun version. The same central citadel and engine area was kept but the assigned horsepower was increased to 65,000shp for the six gun version, then out to 70,000shp for the eight gun version. The eight gun version I also increased the height of the hull by 3 feet. The armoured belt on the eight gun version also went from 4.1" to 5.5" (140mm). The turret armour also was increased with 5.5" face 3.4" sides, rear and roof. What started as a 'medium' cruiser design has ended up as a precursor to the Washington Treaty heavy cruisers of just a few years later design.
The two Admiral Class with the Von Brandenburg, and two remaining Manteuffel types made up the 1st cruiser squadron in the early years of the Weimar Republic. The Manteuffel type was too big (14,500 tons) to be retained as a cruiser under the Germanic States section of the Washington Treaty which gave the GS an 8,000 ton limit for cruisers. The Brandenburg was allowed to be retained but the two Manteuffel type at twice that amount were just too big. In 1936 the two Schroder class were taken in hand for rebuilding and modernisation.
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