secretary to the legation of Saxony in the Electorate of Mainz, a solid employment with the hope for further career advances as a diplomat. While his parents, his fiancée, and other friends were happy, Schiller saw this as a waste of Huber's literary talents. Diplomat in Mainz To take up his new employment in Mainz, Huber travelled via Leipzig, Weimar and Frankfurt. He visited his parents in Leipzig and saw Schiller in Weimar. In Frankfurt, he met Goethe's mother Catharina Elisabeth Goethe. He then arrived in Mainz on 21 April 1788. At first, he was isolated and had difficulties making friends. He was dissatisfied with the monotony of his work, which included copying and decoding messages. After he complained in a letter to Schiller, he received a response admonishing him not to give up in the face of difficulties and praising him for the first scenes of Huber's play , which had been published in Thalia. Schiller stated that many people thought he was the play's author. Huber was thrilled by this response, and not only successfully applied for help reducing his workload but also continued working on his drama. However, Schiller later described the play as wordy and incoherent. When world traveller Georg Forster with his wife Therese and their young daughter, also named Therese, arrived in Mainz on 2 October 1788 to take up the position of librarian at the university, Huber had a "plan of conquest" to win their friendship, and helped the Forsters settle in the new city. Their first impression of Huber was not the best; especially it was his habit of using extensive quotations while speaking that irritated them. Nevertheless, he ended up as Forster's protégé. Huber finished in 1789 and the completed tragedy was published in 1790 by Göschen. Featuring knights, a secret society and a secret court, it was inspired by Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen. Huber first asked Schröder in Hamburg to perform it, but after Schröder asked for a happy end, the project was dropped. The play premiered on 11 February 1790 in the Mannheim National Theatre under the direction of Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg, with actors including August Wilhelm Iffland and Heinrich Beck. Forster and Huber were in attendance and only discovered during the performance that Dalberg had rewritten the ending. The play was not successful, and Huber was not paid his dues. Reviews of the play were mostly negative,