With their size of over 5000 ts, the three fleet tenders of the Wilhelm Bauer class were the largest ships of their kind in the German Kriegsmarine. In 1936 a class of eight new large escorts ships was planned to support the growing U-Boat fleet. Four of those ships were started to build at the Kriegsmarine Shipyard in Kiel, but only three of them were completed.

The last ship of this class was the slightly bigger Otto Wünsche . It survived to war and was taken added to Soviet Navy lists on 05.11.1945. In spring of 1946 it was taken over by a Soviet crew and renamed to Pechora on 03.06.1946. Between 22.08.1946 and 17.09.1973 it served in the Northern Fleet and was reclassified as floating barrack PKZ-14 after that. On 13.04.1977 it was removed from the fleet lists and scrapped soon after that.