Friedrich der Grosse was the second ship of the Kaiser class, the German answer to the British Orion-class super-dreadnoughts. Her keel went down at AG Vulcan in Hamburg in January 1910. She launched in June 1911 and was commissioned in October 1912. Her armament was ten 30.5-centimetre guns in five twin turrets, arranged so that all five could fire to either broadside, plus fourteen 15-centimetre guns and a secondary battery for close defence. She was 172 metres long, displaced 27,000 tonnes at full load, and could make 22 knots. From the moment she entered service she was designated fleet flagship, replacing the older Friedrich der Grosse of the Brandenburg class. Admiral Scheer hoisted his flag aboard her on 18 January 1916.

Late on 31 May 1916, Friedrich der Grosse was the eighth ship in the German battle line as it steamed north into the open North Sea. Scheer had planned the operation as a trap: Hipper's battlecruisers would lure a fraction of the British Grand Fleet south, where the full High Seas Fleet would destroy it before the rest of the British arrived. The plan went exactly as intended for the first few hours. Two British battlecruisers, HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary, exploded under German fire with the loss of nearly all hands. Then Admiral Jellicoe's main battle line crossed Scheer's T, and the trap became the trap. Twice Scheer ordered the famous Gefechtskehrtwendung, the simultaneous 180-degree turn that took his fleet out of the killing zone. Friedrich der Grosse executed both maneuvers and emerged from the battle undamaged.

By July 1917 the food situation aboard Friedrich der Grosse had deteriorated badly. On the 4th and 5th of that month, crewmen staged a hunger strike to protest the poor quality and insufficient quantity of their rations. The officers gave way, fed the men a meal of groat soup, and agreed to form a Menagekommission, a council that gave the enlisted men a voice in the selection and preparation of their food. The episode was a small victory and a serious warning. Further insubordination broke out across the fleet a week later. The ringleaders were arrested and put on trial. Max Reichpietsch, a stoker from Friedrich der Grosse, was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in Cologne on 5 September 1917. The men he had argued with about food now stood at attention while he was shot.

In March 1917, the new super-dreadnought Baden entered service and Scheer hauled down his flag from Friedrich der Grosse and transferred it to the newer ship. The Kaiser-class battleship that had served as flagship since 1913 was reassigned to IV Battle Squadron. She bombarded Russian batteries on Saaremaa during Operation Albion in October 1917 and returned to the North Sea afterward for guard duties. The grand fleet action that Scheer planned for the end of October 1918, the so-called death ride against the British, never sailed. War-weary crews mutinied across the High Seas Fleet. Aboard Friedrich der Grosse, sailors engaged in passive resistance, slowing down as they replenished the ship's coal stocks. When the Kaiser was told what was happening, he reportedly said: 'I no longer have a navy.'

Friedrich der Grosse sailed to Scapa Flow on 21 November 1918 under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, escorted by an Allied flotilla of 370 warships. Her crew was reduced to two hundred officers and men. Her guns were disabled by the removal of their breech blocks. She rode at anchor for seven months while diplomats argued over the Treaty of Versailles. On 21 June 1919, believing the British were about to seize his ships, Reuter transmitted the prearranged scuttling order. Friedrich der Grosse rolled over and sank at 12:16 in the afternoon, one of the earliest ships to go down in the largest deliberate destruction of warships in history. Metal Industries raised her in April 1937 and towed her to Rosyth for scrapping. Her bell was returned to Germany in 1965 and now hangs at the Fleet Headquarters in Glücksburg.