By Alexa Ganzeveld ’22

As a German language professor, Dr. Ethan Blass knows students are going to make mistakes in his class.

“Mistakes are normal; they’re good, actually — they’re inevitable. Even in our native language we make mistakes. Language develops, it changes, it’s something you should play with. It’s not about always being right. What’s more important than being right is just communicating. It doesn’t matter if you’re making small grammatical mistakes; the main thing is just speaking, and it will come in time,” Blass said.

Blass, who joined the Wartburg College faculty this fall as an assistant professor of German, previously served as a German instructor at the University of Oklahoma in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics. He earned both his master’s degree and Ph.D. in Germanic studies from the University of Chicago.

As a student, Blass was interested in the history of the German language and its development through the centuries, which has carried over into his teaching today.

“I learned a lot about German, but I also learned about English as well since it’s also a Germanic language. As I’m teaching German now, I find myself constantly thinking about the structure of the language and why the grammar is the way that it is. You understand the grammar much better when you know where it all comes from,” Blass said.

Blass was first introduced to the German language and culture through his love for classical music and while learning to play piano.

“I wanted to learn more about the German culture and the language that this music came from,” he said.

Blass was drawn to Wartburg because of the college’s ties to its German heritage. The study abroad trips offered at Wartburg give Blass the opportunity to teach and travel with his students in Germany.

“I went to a liberal arts college, and I like the kind of community that the liberal arts model fosters where professors really get to know the students and students can get to know their professors,” said Blass, who earned his bachelor’s degree from Middlebury College in Vermont.

In addition to teaching Introduction to the German Language and Culture, Intermediate German courses, and a course on the Holocaust and its representation in art, Blass will combine his passions for the German language and Hollywood cinema into a course on German Culture Through Film.

“I see German as a gateway to all European literature, in a sense,” Blass said. “Something that I got really interested in was traces of canonical German literature, mainly the literature of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the use of it in 20^th-century cinema.”

Something that Blass would like his peers and students to know about him is that beyond Germany, he also got to live in Siberia for a semester in college. If anyone on campus wants to learn or brush up on Russian, he would love to connect.

To learn more about German and German Studies at Wartburg, visit https://www.wartburg.edu/german/.