History
She was built at Wilhelmshaven and launched on 18 October 1929. During the Spanish Civil War Leipzig conducted several patrols as part of the international naval blockade. Two attacks on the Leipzig on 15 and 18 June 1937 caused Germany and Italy to withdraw from the international patrols.
On 11–12 December 1939, she and sister-ship Nurnberg provided cover for German destroyers mining the approaches to the River Thames, and while returning on 13 December 1939 she (and Nurnberg) were torpedoed by the Royal Navy submarine Salmon and severely damaged. Two destroyed boiler rooms were restored as living quarters only and Leipzig was converted into a training ship with a reduced maximum speed of 24 knots. She was recommissioned after repairs on 1 December 1940. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 (Operation "Barbarossa"), the cruiser took part in the shelling of the islands Saaremaa and Hiiumaa in the Baltic Sea, before returning to her duties as a training vessel. She remained in the Baltic Sea and on 15 October 1944 was accidentally rammed amidships by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in heavy fog. Heavily damaged (she had been sliced right thru to her keel-plate) and effectively immobilised, she received structural repairs needed to keep her hull from breaking apart and allow her to float. For the remainder of the war she continued to serve as a training, barracks and flak ship. In March 1945 she shelled advancing Soviet army units near Gdynia, but was then towed to Aabenraa, Denmark at the end of March.
At the end of World War II Leipzig was surrendered to British forces, moved to Wilhelmshaven and surveyed to determine if repairs to her hull and machinery could be made to make her seaworthy, but was not repaired and scuttled in the North Sea with a cargo of gas munitions on 16 December 1946.
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