Intended for overseas duty, Condor was armed with a main battery of eight 10.5-centimeter (4.1 in) guns, and could steam at a speed of 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph).

Condor served abroad for the majority of her career, first in German East Africa in the 1890s, followed by a stint in the South Seas Station in the Pacific Ocean in the 1900s.

Through the 1870s and early 1880s, Germany built two types of cruising vessels: small, fast avisos suitable for service as fleet scouts and larger, long-ranged screw corvettes capable of patrolling the German colonial empire.

General Leo von Caprivi, the Chief of the Imperial Admiralty, sought to modernize Germany's cruiser force.

Her propulsion system consisted of two horizontal 3-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of screw propellers.

[3] The ship was armed with a main battery of eight 10.5 cm (4.1 in) SK L/35 quick-firing (QF) guns in single pedestal mounts, supplied with 800 rounds of ammunition in total.

An outbreak of Cholera in Hamburg made work on the ship difficult, but the completed hull was nevertheless ready for launching as scheduled, on 23 February 1892.

Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Wilhelm Schröder, the Chief of the Baltic Station, gave the speech at her launching, and she was christened by Kapitän zur See (Captain at Sea) von Bodenhausen, the director of the Kaiserliche Werft (Imperial Dockyard) in Wilhelmshaven.

[4][5] On 2 October 1894, Condor was deployed to German East Africa, based in Dar es Salaam to replace the gunboat Möwe.

One of the major reasons Condor was sent to the East African Station was the pressure Britain was placing on the Boer republics—the Transvaal and the Orange Free State—which Germany held to be in its interest.

[5] In late December 1895, the British launched the so-called Jameson Raid into the Transvaal; this prompted the German Navy to send Condor back to Lourenço Marques in January 1896.

From 26 August to 25 November, she lay off Cape Town, but protests against the German consul, Count von Pfeil, led to moving the cruiser back to Lourenço Marques, where she remained from 11 December to 2 February 1897.

She thereafter carried the Imperial governor of German Samoa, Wilhelm Solf, on a visit to Hawaii; the trip lasted from 30 August to 14 September.

[10] In early 1909, unrest broke out in Apia; because Condor was absent, the light cruisers Leipzig and Arcona and Jaguar were sent to suppress the uprising.

During the Agadir Crisis in November, she went to Yap in order to be able to quickly receive news from the recently constructed wireless station there.