“Once upon a time two people lived in Paradise”

The expression “Once upon a time two people lived in Paradise” frames an image of innocent, shared life that recurs against the anxieties of Franz Biberkopf’s experience in Berlin. First it opens a creation story; later it interrupts a scene of mental distress and reappears in a playful refrain, making Paradise both a remembered ideal and a recurring rhythm in the narrative.

The Edenic opening

The phrase begins the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Lord has made the animals, plants, heaven, and earth; animals play without tormenting one another, and the sun and moon rise and set in a world described as wholly joyful. This expansive, orderly scene gives the expression its original force: Paradise is not merely a place-name but an image of life without mutual harm.

The narration then turns from telling to inviting movement and song. Its clapping and tapping rhythm leads into the declaration that the fishes and birds are in Paradise, before Franz Biberkopf enters Berlin. The transition places a bright, communal cadence immediately beside the urban story that follows, without suggesting that the city itself shares Eden’s ease.

Return amid distress

The opening words recur during a scene in which Franz is overwhelmed by dread. He imagines houses collapsing, fears that something is wrong in the world, and sees the people around him as terrible. In the middle of this disturbance, the narration returns to Adam and Eve and the splendid Garden of Eden, now in a shorter version that again mentions the playing birds and animals.

The placement makes the peaceful creation story sharply unlike Franz’s present experience. Around the refrain, the people at the gathering judge him mad and tell him to leave; after the dark cloud passes, he drops the chair he has been holding and departs. The Eden passage does not resolve the conflict. Instead, its calm account of a world without torment stands beside a scene of panic, political argument, and social rejection.

Song, companionship, and recurrence

A further return comes as a compact, childlike refrain: hands clap, feet tap, and fishes and birds belong to Paradise all day. It echoes the earlier movement-song while making the image less like a sustained biblical account and more like a tune that can be carried from one scene into another.

This refrain appears in the sequence in which Franz and Lina leave the pub and go dancing. Lina has brought him the Sunday paper, and the two read a poem about the comfort of having a friend while travelling. Franz remembers his singing and feels at home beside her. The surrounding companionship gives the Paradise motif a more immediate human setting than the Eden story does, but it does not erase the earlier fear and disorder. Across its returns, the expression moves between an ideal of untroubled life, a stark contrast to Franz’s crisis, and a rhythm shared in a moment of closeness.