Why early German cruisers borrowed incompatible ideas

Why did the early Imperial German Navy experiment with such different cruiser types?

It borrowed from several navies with incompatible doctrines while still lacking a clear cruiser doctrine of its own.

After German unification, the Imperial German Navy sought ships, infrastructure, and skilled labor without relying on British assistance. It consulted Denmark, Sweden, Austria-Hungary, and the Netherlands, but those navies had developed cruisers for very different strategic environments. Coastal-defense fleets favored different combinations of armor and range from navies responsible for overseas possessions. Germany therefore imported incompatible ideas while it still lacked a settled doctrine of its own, making experimentation understandable even when the resulting ships were unsatisfactory.