Ottomar Domnick, a neurologist, psychiatrist, and art lover from Stuttgart, independently produced his first feature film, an experimental psychological portrait with the detached aesthetic of a newsreel. Called a “turning point in the film history of the FRG” by critic Olaf Moller, the film probes the inner and outer world of Jonas, an isolated print shop employee. Upon finding a hat with the initials of a friend from the war, Jonas’ guilt and existential fear spiral into a Kafka-esque, hallucinatory paranoia. As the reasons for his neurotic attachment to the hat gradually surface, he roams around Stuttgart feeling cornered by the architecture of an alienating city, particularly its ominous and omnipresent TV tower. For film scholar Marc Silberman, Jonas provided a breath of fresh air and constituted a singular West German production that “critically addressed the repressive atmosphere of the Fifties.”