He added, “I try to make it loud enough to annoy the neighbors, but not too much.”

So far, the neighbors do not seem to be annoyed. On the contrary, Berlin has embraced the little house from Detroit, which Ms. Parks moved to in 1957, and lived in with her brother’s large family after fleeing death threats and employment problems in the South.

The house’s unlikely second life in Mr. Mendoza’s garden in Berlin has captured the city’s imagination, making front-page news and, for some, symbolizing Germany’s changing role in the world.

The project came about last year, when Rhea McCauley, Ms. Parks’s niece, met Mr. Mendoza in Detroit. As part of an art project that explored his own sense of home, as well as the American subprime mortgage crisis, Mr. Mendoza successfully transported an abandoned house from Detroit to Europe, winning the trust of Detroit community members along the way. Ms. McCauley told him she had managed to buy back the family house for $500, but she could not find anyone interested in saving it from demolition.

Mr. Mendoza, who makes his living as a fine-arts painter, agreed to help. He raised a little over $100,000 by selling some of his paintings, and set out for Detroit. There, he worked with a local team to take apart the house, which had fallen into extreme disrepair.