Her class included three other ships: Breslau , Strassburg , and Stralsund. The ship was armed with a main battery of twelve Magdeburg was used as a torpedo test ship after her commissioning until the outbreak of World War I in August , when she was brought to active service and deployed to the Baltic.
In the Baltic, Magdeburg fired the first shots of the war against the Russians on 2 August, when she shelled the port of Libau. She participated in a series of bombardments of Russian positions until late August. On the 26th, she participated in a sweep of the entrance to the Gulf of Finland ; while steaming off the Estonian coast, she ran aground off the island of Odensholm and could not be freed.
A pair of Russian cruisers appeared and seized the ship. Fifteen crew members were killed in the brief engagement. They recovered three intact German code books , one of which they passed to the British.
The ability to decrypt German wireless signals provided the British with the ability to ambush German units on several occasions during the war, including the Battle of Jutland. The Russians partially scrapped Magdeburg while she remained grounded before completely destroying the wreck.
The Magdeburg -class cruisers were designed in response to the development of the British Invincible -class battlecruisers , which were faster than all existing German light cruisers. As a result, speed of the new ships must be increased. To accomplish this, more powerful engines were fitted and their hulls were lengthened to improve their hydrodynamic efficiency.
