Germany's own name for the Scharnhorst class

The class was the first German type discussed here under the term Schlachtschiff, meaning battleship. Earlier battleships had been described as Linienschiffe, or ships of the line, while the Deutschland class retained the Panzerschiff label for armored ship. These contemporary German categories support the fast-battleship reading from a different institutional direction than the Royal Navy evidence. The terminology also shows why translating every German heavy ship through later English-language labels can obscure how its own navy understood the design.