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—Braunschweig, Elsass, Hessen, Preussen, and Lothringen—and they were an improvement over the preceding Wittelsbach class. The Braunschweigs mounted a more powerful armament of 28 cm (11 in) and 17 cm (6.7 in) guns (compared to 24 cm (9.4 in) and 15 cm (5.9 in) guns of the Wittelsbachs). 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 Dreadnought, which curtailed their careers.