The five ships of the Deutschland class were the last pre-Dreadnougth battleships build in Germany. Based on the previous Braunschweig class, the new ships were slightly better protected, but lost a bit of the good maneuverability. The artillery of those ships was kept quite similar to the one of their predescessors.

With their old fashioned design, those ships were only use as second line battleships during World War I, but all took part in the Battle of Jutland. Because of their age those ships were among the few battleships, Germany was allowed to keep after World War I, two of them even saw action in World War II. For more information on this, see the Kriegsmarine page on Schleswig Holstein  and Schlesien .

Hannover was used for fleet operation until 1917, including the Battle of Jutland. Until the end of the war, it was used as a coastal defence ship. It served in the Reichsmarine until 1935 and was used as test ship for ground mine damage evaluation after that. It was planned to modify it as a radio controlled target ship for aircraft, but this plan was abandoned. The ship was finally broken down between 1944 and 1946 in Bremerhaven.