The "Braunschweig"-class battleships were a group of five pre-dreadnought battleships of the German "Kaiserliche Marine" (Imperial Navy) built in the early 1900s. They were the first class of battleships authorized under the Second Naval Law, a major naval expansion program. The class comprised five ships—, , , , and —and they were an improvement over the preceding . The "Braunschweig"s mounted a more powerful armament of and guns (compared to and guns of the "Wittelsbach"s). Less than two years after the first members of the class entered service, the ships were rendered obsolescent by the British all-big-gun battleship , which curtailed their careers.