SMS Gneisenau was an armored cruiser of the German navy, part of the two-ship Scharnhorst class. She was named after August von Gneisenau, a Prussian general of the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was laid down in 1904 at the AG Weser dockyard in Bremen, launched in June 1906, and completed in March 1908, at a cost of over 19 million goldmarks. She was armed with a main battery of eight 21-centimeter (8.3 in) guns, had a top speed of 23.6 knots (43.7 km/h; 27.2 mph), and displaced 12,985 metric tons (12,780 long tons; 14,314 short tons) at full combat load.

Gneisenau was assigned to the German East Asia Squadron based in Tsingtao, China, along with Scharnhorst, in 1910. They served as the core of Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee's fleet. After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the two ships, accompanied by three light cruisers and several colliers, sailed across the Pacific ocean—in the process evading the various Allied naval forces sent to intercept them—before arriving off the southern coast of South America. On 1 November 1914, Gneisenau and the rest of the East Asia Squadron encountered and overpowered a British squadron at the Battle of Coronel. The stinging defeat prompted the British Admiralty to detach two battlecruisers to hunt down and destroy von Spee's flotilla, which they accomplished at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December 1914.