Hopp, hopp, hopp! Pferdchen lauf Galopp!

“Hopp, hopp, hopp! Pferdchen lauf Galopp!” is a short galloping rhyme identified in the novel’s explanatory notes as a quotation from Carl Hahn’s poem “Das Steckenpferd” (“The Hobby Horse”), set to music by Karl Gottlieb Hering. The note also supplies the English rendering, “Quick, quick, quick! Trot, little horsey.” The expression brings a familiar children’s-song cadence into a novel attentive to the sounds and rhythms of public life.

Source and Form

The note identifies both the poem and its musical setting, placing the phrase within an established popular song rather than presenting it as an original line. Its repetition of “hopp” and its imperative to trot give it a compact, forward-driving rhythm: the words enact the movement they call for. The supplied translation preserves that brisk, playful motion.

Movement in the City

Elsewhere, the novel’s city material is organized by movement of a different kind. Tram 68 is described through its route and coordinated fares, while a scene at Rosenthaler Platz catches a man jumping from a tram with two yellow parcels as an empty taxi skids past and a policeman watches. These details make transit both an everyday system and a source of sudden street action.

At Alexanderplatz, tram lines cross a square whose roadway is being torn up for the underground railway; pedestrians walk on planks between the works. A pile driver repeatedly slams rails into the ground in front of Aschinger’s restaurant, its blows drawing a crowd of onlookers. The rhyme’s hopping tempo offers a playful verbal counterpoint to these mechanical rhythms, though the evidence does not establish that the phrase is spoken over or directly attached to any one of these scenes.

Place in the Novel’s Soundscape

The expression’s significance lies in the scale it opens up: a children’s song, compact enough to be remembered as a refrain, sits within a book that also registers timetables, fares, street encounters, and the pounding work of urban construction. The rhyme’s cheerful propulsion contrasts with the regulated and laborious movement surrounding it. As a note on a cultural reference, it preserves the song’s source and tune-maker while leaving its precise dramatic use unstated.