List of coastal defense ships of Germany

In the 1880s, Germany built a series of coastal defense ships to protect its coastline on the North and Baltic Seas. During the 1870s and early 1880s, the Imperial German Navy had built a number of ironclad warships of various designs. In the mid-1880s, however, dissatisfaction with the Sachsen-class ironclads and the rise of the Jeune École doctrine persuaded Leo von Caprivi, then the chief of the Imperial Navy to turn away from capital ship construction in favor of coastal defense ships and torpedo boats.^[1] As a result, the next class of large warships, the Siegfried class, was significantly smaller than the earlier ironclads, and armed with a main battery of only three large-caliber guns. These vessels were intended only for defense of German harbors.^[2] Six of them were built between 1888 and 1894.^[3] Another two ships of the Odin class were built to a modified design between 1892 and 1896.^[4]

All eight of the ships were heavily modernized between 1898 and 1904; the reconstruction included lengthening the ships and equipping them with new boilers.^[5] All eight ships were mobilized briefly at the start of World War I in August 1914 as the VI Battle Squadron, though by August 1915, they had all been withdrawn from service and employed in secondary roles.^[6] All were stricken from the naval register in 1919 after the end of the war and subsequently discarded; three of the ships, Frithjof, Odin, and Ägir were converted into merchant ships and served in this capacity throughout the 1920s. The rest were broken up for scrap by the early 1920s.^[7]

These coastal defense ships turned out to be a temporary diversion for the German fleet. In 1888, before any of the Siegfrieds or Odins had been laid down, Caprivi was selected to replace Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who had been forced out of the position by the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II; Caprivi in turn was replaced by Vice Admiral Alexander von Monts.^[8] Monts, a veteran naval officer, opposed Caprivi's policy on coastal defense, and instead proposed building four new 10,000-metric-ton (9,800-long-ton; 11,000-short-ton) Brandenburg-class battleships. These ships replaced what would have been the last two of the coastal defenders for which Caprivi had called.^[9] This set Germany on the trend of building large, ocean-going battleships for the next two decades.^[10][11] Indeed, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz characterized the period the Siegfried and Odin classes were built, up to the passage of the First Naval Law in 1898, as the "wasted decade".^[8]

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