In Berlin, his admiration for Frederick the Great, together with his distaste for the pettiness of the legal procedure at Wetzlar, impelled him to take service under the Prussia monarch. He was fortunate in gaining an appointment in the department of mines and manufactures, as at the head of that office was an able and intelligent administrator, Friedrich Anton von Heynitz, who helped him to master the principles of economics and civil government. In June 1785, he was sent for a time as Prussian ambassador to the courts of Mainz, Zweibrücken and Darmstadt, but he soon felt a distaste for diplomacy, and in 1786 and 1787, he was able to indulge his taste for travel by a tour in England, where he pursued his researches into commercial and mining affairs.