Built to be able to serve with the main German fleet and as a colonial cruiser, she was armed with a battery of ten 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and a top speed of 21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph).

Frauenlob was a modified version of the basic Gazelle design, with improved armor and additional coal storage for a longer cruising range.

There, she saw little action in the early stages of the battle, but in one of the chaotic night engagements as the Germans tried to disengage and return home, Frauenlob was hit by a torpedo launched by the cruiser HMS Southampton, which caused the ship to capsize and sink with the vast majority of her crew.

Following the construction of the unprotected cruisers of the Bussard class and the aviso Hela for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), the Construction Department of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office) prepared a design for a new small cruiser that combined the best attributes of both types of vessels.

[4] Her propulsion system consisted of two triple-expansion steam engines manufactured by AG Weser, driving a pair of screw propellers.

Frauenlob carried 700 t (690 long tons) of coal, which gave her a range of 4,400 nautical miles (8,100 km; 5,100 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).

Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Wilhelm Büchsel gave a speech at the launching ceremony, and the new ship was christened by Anna Reuss, Princess of Stolberg-Wernigerode.

After a three-day endurance test passing through the Skagerrak, Kattegat, and the Danish straits, Frauenlob arrived in Kiel, where she was assigned to the reconnaissance force for I Squadron.

After the annual fleet maneuvers, she was drydocked in Wilhelmshaven for an overhaul, and in October, KK Robert Mischke took command of the ship.

Frauenlob won Kaiser Wilhelm II's Schiesspreis (Shooting Prize) for excellent gunnery during that year's maneuvers; up to this time, he had previously only awarded one to each of the fleet's battleship squadrons.

[13] Frauenlob and Stettin shortly thereafter encountered the British cruiser HMS Arethusa and about six destroyers and they opened fire at 09:09.

She turned away to starboard in order to escape from the punishing fire, but Frauenlob kept up with the badly damaged British cruiser until she disappeared in the fog.

After the engagement ended, Frauenlob and the torpedo boat V3 took the badly damaged minesweeper T33 under tow and returned her to Heligoland, before proceeding to Wilhelmshaven.

[11][14] After completing repairs, Frauenlob joined the High Seas Fleet when it sailed in support of the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group during the raid on Yarmouth on 3–4 November.

The plan called for the battlecruiser squadron to steam north to the Skagerrak, with the intention of luring out a portion of the British fleet so it could be destroyed by Scheer's waiting battleships.

[17] Later, during the chaotic night fighting, the battlecruisers Seydlitz and Moltke passed too closely in front of Stettin, which forced all of the ships of IV Scouting Group to fall out of line, inadvertently bringing them into contact with the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron.

British 6-inch (152 mm) shellfire set the deck alight, and the stricken cruiser quickly capsized and sank with heavy loss of life.

John Campbell reports that twelve officers and 308 men were killed in the sinking,[18][19] while Hans Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, and Hans-Otto Steinmetz state that 324 died when Frauenlob sank.

Both agree that only 9 men from her crew survived, having been picked up after the battle by a Dutch steamer and interned in the Netherlands for the rest of the war.

The British marine archaeologist Innes McCartney led a subsequent dive and confirmed that the wreck sits upright on the sea floor and is largely intact.