SMS Oldenburg was an armored warship of the German Imperial Navy. Laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin in 1883, the ship was launched in December 1884 and commissioned into the Navy in April 1886. Oldenburg was intended to have been a fifth member of the Sachsen class of sortie corvettes, but budgetary limitations and dissatisfaction with the Sachsen class prompted a redesign that bore little resemblance to the earlier vessels. Oldenburg mounted her main battery of eight guns amidships, six in a central casemate on the main deck and two directly above them on the broadside. She was the first German capital ship constructed entirely from German-made steel.