 Seven ships were originally planned in the class : Mackensen , Graf Spee , Prinz Eitel Friedrich , Ersatz A , and three other vessels . The last three ships were redesigned as the Ersatz Yorck class , leaving four ships to be built to the Mackensen design . The first two ships were ordered on 14 August 1914 , shortly after the outbreak of World War I. Mackensen was funded through the 1914 budget , while funding for Graf Spee came from the war budget . Mackensen — ordered under the provisional name Ersatz Victoria Louise , as a replacement for the old protected cruiser Victoria Louise — was named after Generalfeldmarschall ( Field Marshal ) August von Mackensen . The ship was laid down on 30 January 1915 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg , under construction number 240 . She was launched on 21 April 1917 ; at the small launching ceremony , Generaloberst ( Colonel General ) Josias von Heeringen gave the speech and the ship was christened by Mackensen 's wife . Construction was halted about 15 months before she would have been completed . The British mistakenly believed the ship to have been completed , and so they included the ship on the list of vessels to be interned at Scapa Flow instead of the fleet flagship Baden . Mackensen was stricken from the German navy , according to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles , on 17 November 1919 . She was sold for scrap and eventually broken up in 1922 at Kiel @-@ Nordmole . 
