SMS Brummer was a minelaying light cruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine; she was the lead ship of her class. Her sister ship was Bremse. Brummer was laid down at AG Vulcan's shipyard in Stettin, Germany, on 24 April 1915 and launched on 11 December 1915 and completed on 2 April 1916. Armed with a main battery of four 15-centimeter (5.9 in) guns in single mounts, she carried 400 mines.

Despite being designed as a minelayer, the German Navy never operated her as such. She and her sister were used to raid a British convoy to Norway in October 1917. The two cruisers sank two escorting destroyers and nine of the twelve merchant ships of the convoy. The Kaiserliche Marine considered sending the two ships to attack convoys in the Atlantic Ocean, but the difficulties associated with refueling at sea convinced the Germans to abandon the plan. Brummer was included in the list of ships interned at Scapa Flow following the Armistice. On 21 June 1919, the commander of the interned fleet, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, ordered the scuttling of the fleet. Brummer was successfully scuttled, and unlike most of the other wrecks, she was never raised for scrapping.

At the start of World War I in August 1914, the German firm AG Vulcan had a set of four steam turbines that had been ordered by the Imperial Russian Navy for the cruiser Svetlana. As the two countries were now at war, the German government seized the turbines and the naval command decided to build two fast, mine-laying cruisers using the engines, as the existing light cruisers were too few in number to be spared for that task.

Brummer was 140.4 meters (461 ft) long overall and had a beam of 13.2 m (43 ft) and a draft of 6 m (20 ft) forward. She displaced 4,385 t (4,316 long tons) as designed and up to 5,856 t (5,764 long tons; 6,455 short tons) at full load. Her propulsion system consisted of two sets of 33,000-shaft-horsepower (25,000 kW) steam turbines powered by two coal-fired and four oil-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers, which were ducted into three funnels. These provided a top speed of 28 kn (52 km/h; 32 mph) and a range of 5,800 nautical miles (10,700 km; 6,700 mi) at 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph). In service however, the ship reached 34 kn (63 km/h; 39 mph).

The ship was armed with four 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 guns in single pedestal mounts; two were arranged forward on the centerline, forward and aft of the conning tower, and two were placed in a superfiring pair aft. These guns fired a 45.3-pound (20.5 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 840 meters per second (2,800 ft/s). The guns had a maximum elevation of 30 degrees, which allowed them to engage targets out to 17,600 m (57,700 ft). They were supplied with 600 rounds of ammunition, for 150 shells per gun. Brummer also carried two 8.8 cm (3.5 in) SK L/45 anti-aircraft guns mounted on the centerline astern of the funnels. She was also equipped with a pair of 50 cm (19.7 in) torpedo tubes with four torpedoes in a swivel mount amidships. Designed as a minelayer, she carried 400 mines. The ship was protected by a waterline armored belt that was 40 mm (1.6 in) thick amidships. The conning tower had 100 mm (3.9 in) thick sides, and the deck was covered with 15 mm (0.59 in) thick armor plate.

Brummer, named after the armored gunboat of the same name that had been built in the 1880s, was ordered under the contract name C, and was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin on 24 April 1915. She was launched on 11 December 1915, after which fitting-out work commenced. While the ship was under construction, the Germans attempted to conceal her resemblance to British cruisers by placing sheet metal over her bow to make it seem as though she had the standard German straight stem. Completed in less than four months, she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 2 April 1916. Brummer was ready for service with the fleet by May 1916, though she did not steam with the rest of the High Seas Fleet for the Battle of Jutland at the end of the month. She soon thereafter joined II Scouting Group, which had been badly weakened by losses at the Battle of Jutland.

Over the period 11–20 October 1916, Brummer and Bremse served with the High Seas Fleet for a major sweep into the North Sea. The operation led to a brief action on 19 October, during which a British submarine torpedoed the cruiser München. The failure of the operation (coupled with the action of 19 August 1916) convinced the German naval command to abandon its aggressive fleet strategy. Toward the end of 1916, she was transferred to IV Scouting Group. She laid a minefield between Norderney and Helgoland on 10 January 1917. For much of the rest of the year, she took part in local defensive operations in the German Bight, supporting minesweepers. During this period, she was based alternatively at Emden and Wilhelmshaven.

By late 1917, Britain had agreed to ship 250,000 t (246,000 long tons; 276,000 short tons) tons of coal per month to Norway, and a regular stream of convoys carrying shipments of coal was crossing the North Sea by late 1917. These were usually weakly escorted by only a couple of destroyers and armed trawlers. Attempts to interdict them with U-boats had to that point been ineffective, so Admiral Reinhard Scheer, the chief of the Admiralstab, decided to deploy a surface force to carry out a surprise attack to supplement the U-boat campaign. In addition to damaging British shipping, Scheer sought to divert escorts from the Atlantic theater, where his U-boats were concentrated. As a further objective, the raid was intended to distract British attention from Operation Albion, which saw much of the High Seas Fleet detached into the Baltic Sea to attack the islands in the Gulf of Riga. Brummer, commanded by Fregattenkapitän (FK—Frigate Captain) Leonhardi, and Bremse, commanded by FK Westerkamp, were selected for the first such operation. Their high speed and large radius of action, coupled with their resemblance to British light cruisers, made them suited to the task. In preparation for the raid, their crews painted the ships dark gray to further camouflage them as British vessels.