Later treaties mattered to Deutschland-class classification

Did the Versailles restrictions force the Deutschland class to be classified as battleships?

No. Later treaties and international agreements had superseded relevant parts of the Versailles settlement.

The Deutschland class's status cannot be reduced to the original Versailles restrictions. Later naval treaties, League of Nations arrangements, and other agreements had superseded parts of that settlement by the time the ships were discussed. The label 'pocket battleship' therefore did not follow automatically from an unchanged Versailles cruiser limit. The brief answer leaves the detailed treaty sequence open while rejecting a direct one-rule explanation.