PHOTO OF THE DAY: PICKLED WATERMELON, ANYBODY?

Donna Zeeb weaves her way in-between tables at Saturday night’s Oktoberfest in Menno offering the guests the pickled watermelon that had mistakenly been left in the refrigerator during the serving of the German meal. But that oversight was merely a minor hiccup for Zeeb and other organizers of the annual event, which drew about 225 people to the city-school auditorium.

The celebration was marked by the meal — which included sausage, sauerkraut, hot German potato salad, fruit salad and kuchen — and also live polka music courtesy of the Leo Lonnie Orchestra, a band from Brainard, Neb.

This year’s Oktoberfest was highlighted by the 150th anniversary of the migration that brought thousands of Germans from Russia to America starting in 1873. The heritage specific to Menno — the heritage celebrated during Oktoberfest — comes through the ancestry of Black Sea German families who were the earliest to find a new home in Dakota Territory.

A pamphlet handed out by the SoDak Stamm Germans from Russia Heritage Society — the group behind Oktoberfest — explains:

“The first settlers were of the Evangelical Reformed and Lutheran faiths settled between Menno and Lesterville,” it reads. “Hutchinson County became the Mother Settlement for many thousands of Germans from Russia. In time, over 100,000 Lutheran, Reformed, Baptist, German Congregational, Mennonite, and Hutterite settlers found their way to Dakota.

“In Hutchinson County, Southy Dakota, we find the vast diversity of all these groups settled as they had on the steppes of South Russia.

“Here, as in Russia, they settled in communities according to their commonality of religion and family relationships. The largest majority of the Germans from Russia were Evangelical Protestants, and Roman Catholics made up the second largest group, settling mostly in Kansas and North Dakota. The Anabaptist Hutterites and Mennonites were less than 10 percent of the Germans from Russia. Many Mennonites settled in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. All the original Hutterite immigrants settled in what would become South Dakota.”