 Following the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 , Kaiser Barbarossa and her sisters were mobilized as coastal defense ships in the V Battle Squadron and assigned to the North and Baltic Seas . She saw no combat during the war , and due to a shortage of crews , the ships were withdrawn from active duty in February 1915 and relegated to secondary duties . Kaiser Barbarossa was briefly used as a torpedo target ship for most of 1915 and thereafter spent the remainder of the war as a prison ship in Wilhelmshaven . Following the end of the war in 1918 , Kaiser Barbarossa was decommissioned and sold for scrap metal . The ship was broken up in 1919 – 20 . 
