The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve 10.5 cm SK L/45 guns and had a top speed of 27.5 knots (50.9 km/h; 31.6 mph).

She saw significant action in the early years of World War I, including several operations off the British coast and the Battles of Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank, in August 1914 and November 1915, respectively.

These were powered by sixteen coal-fired Marine-type water-tube boilers, although they were later altered to use fuel oil that was sprayed on the coal to increase its burn rate.

After about half an hour of inaccurate shooting from both sides, German lookouts spotted what they thought was a second British cruiser approaching, so Harder decided to break off the engagement.

Stralsund and the rest of the surviving light cruisers retreated into the haze and were reinforced by the battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group under Konteradmiral (KAdm—Rear Admiral) Franz Hipper.

In late September, Stralsund was temporarily moved to the Baltic Sea, where she took part in a sweep for Russian forces as far north as the northern tip of Gotland.

While the battlecruisers bombarded the town of Yarmouth, Stralsund laid a minefield, which sank a steamer and the submarine HMS D5 which had sortied to intercept the German raiders.

During the night of 15 December, the main body of the High Seas Fleet encountered British destroyers, and fearing the prospect of a night-time torpedo attack, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl ordered the ships to retreat.

[23] Stralsund joined the light cruiser Graudenz on 3 January 1915 for a patrol into the North Sea to the west of Amrun Bank that ended without locating British forces.

Stralsund and Graudenz were assigned to the front of the screen and Rostock and Kolberg steamed on either side of the formation; each cruiser was supported by a half-flotilla of torpedo boats.

As the main German fleet was in port and therefore unable to support the battlecruisers, Hipper decided to retreat at high speed.

She went to sea again on 17 April for a minelaying operation in company with Strassburg that lasted until the following day, this time to lay mines off the Swarte Bank.

Another sortie by the entire High Seas Fleet took place on 29–30 May, and like the previous operations, the Germans failed to locate any British vessels.

She was then detached from II Scouting Group on 19 February for a major refit that began two days later at the Kaiserliche Werft shipyard in Kiel.

She then returned to II Scouting Group, serving as its flagship from 4 August to 30 October, initially under KAdm Friedrich Boedicker until 11 September, when he was replaced by Reuter.

[28][a] Stralsund spent the next several months participating in patrols of the southern North Sea, interrupted only by a period in the shipyard at the Kaiserliche Werft in Kiel for repairs to her turbines, which lasted from 7 August to 15 October.

Operation Albion, the amphibious attack on the islands in the Gulf of Riga, had already ended in a German victory, so the ship quickly returned to the North Sea.

[29] On 2 February 1918, while covering a minesweeping unit in the North Sea, Stralsund struck a mine laid by British ships.

[31] After returning to service, Stralsund joined the rest of IV Scouting Group for training exercises in the Baltic on 27 April.

From there, Stralsund sailed for Helsingfors, Finland; there, KAdm Ludolf von Uslar replaced Meurer as the commander of naval forces in the area.

Over the next few weeks, the ship cruised to various ports in the region, including Reval, Estonia; Mariehamn, Hanko, and Turku, Finland; Windau, Latvia; and Libau.

The nascent Soviet government was fighting the Russian Civil War against the Whites, and British forces had intervened in northern Russia, occupying Murmansk.

The Soviets, who had signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, requested German help to expel the British, fight White forces, and suppress the Don Cossacks.

Though Germany was interested in defeating British forces in north Russia, the German command had no desire to fight the anti-communist Whites or the Cossacks.

On 12 August, German forces began clearing minefields in the eastern Gulf of Finland, though the major warships of the unit remained behind in Kiel.

By that time, Germany's position in the Balkans began to collapse after the Vardar offensive on the Macedonian front inflicted a decisive defeat on German and Bulgarian forces.

But after the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in June 1919, shortly before the Treaty of Versailles was signed, this proved to be an unrealistic expectation.

[38] Mulhouse was assigned to the French Mediterranean Fleet as part of the 3rd Light Division in company with the other ex-German cruisers Metz and Strasbourg and the ex-Austro-Hungarian Thionville.

[37] The unit, which was renamed the 2nd Light Division in December 1926, was moved to the Atlantic in August 1928, though all of the ex-German and ex-Austro-Hungarian vessels were then placed in reserve, since the first generation of post-war cruisers were entering service in the French fleet.

As the French fleet completed additional cruisers, it no longer had a need to keep Mulhouse in reserve, and she was struck from the naval register on 15 February 1933.