The Kaiser class of ironclad warships was a pair of vessels built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in the early 1870s.

Kaiser was the flagship of Otto von Diederichs's East Asia Squadron during the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory seizure in November 1897.

The ironclad fleet was intended to serve as a coastal defense force to prevent another blockade of German ports as had been conducted by the Danish Navy during the Second Schleswig War in 1864.

[3] Reed designed the vessels as casemate ships, mounting a smaller battery of guns, albeit of a larger caliber, compared to traditional broadside ironclads.

They nevertheless led to the British Royal Navy to order two more ships of the same type: HMS Alexandra and Temeraire, which carried even larger guns.

[5] The German navy regarded the ships as good sea boats, very sensitive to commands from the helm, and with a gentle motion.

[6] The two ships were powered by a two-cylinder single-expansion steam engine built by John Penn and Sons of Greenwich.

They were also equipped with a full ship rig with a total surface area of 1,623 m2 (17,470 sq ft).

Kaiser was able to steam for 2,470 nautical miles (4,570 km; 2,840 mi) at a cruising speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), though due to her significantly greater fuel capacity, Deutschland could steam for 3,200 nmi (5,900 km; 3,700 mi) at that speed.

[5] The Kaiser-class ships were armed with a main battery of eight 26-centimeter (10.2 in) L/20 guns mounted in a central armored casemate amidships.

[6] They formed half of a squadron sent to the Mediterranean Sea in 1877 in response to unrest in the Ottoman Empire related to the Russo-Turkish War; the violence threatened German citizens living there.

The squadron, under the command of Rear Admiral Carl Ferdinand Batsch, steamed to the ports of Haifa and Jaffa in July 1877, but found no significant tensions ashore.

[9] During the maneuvers, both ships' steam engines proved troublesome, and indeed forced a temporary halt to the training exercises when they simultaneously broke down.

[6] Admiral Otto von Diederichs, then the commander of the East Asia Squadron, used Kaiser for his flagship.

The ship was involved in the Jiaozhou Bay Leased Territory seizure in November 1897 and was later deployed to protect German interests in the Philippines during the Spanish–American War in 1898.