Marie and John Muller Memorial Scholarship

In 1987, Hermine Muller Mathews honored California Lutheran University with a double blessing by endowing not one but two new scholarships. She trusted that her wishes would be carried out because her nephew, Dr. Mark Mathews, was then the president of CLU. The scholarships were memorials to her husband, Ben B. Mathews, and to her parents, Marie and John Muller. This story relates to the Mullers’ scholarship.

Hermine was a detail-oriented person who kept excellent historical records, sometimes bringing to life times that were otherwise known only from the pages of history books. She was also a devout Christian, and her strong religious belief entered into everything she did. One can get a sense of Hermine by reading the extraordinary account of the emigration of her parents, Marie Schuff and John Muller, from Transylvania (Austro-Hungary) to America in the early 1900s. That full story, while too detailed and too captivating to condense here, is available on request to any recipient of this scholarship who wishes to read it.

Marie Schuff was born in the village of Jakobsdorf, Transylvania, in 1881 and died in the United States in 1955 at the age of 74. She immigrated at age 24 to New Castle, Pennsylvania. John Muller, Marie’s future husband, was born in 1878, also in Jakobsdorf. Unable to resist the call for workers in American factories during the Great Industrial Revolution, John had immigrated at age 25 to Youngstown, Ohio. The love story between John and Marie came about when John’s sister back in Jakobsdorf responded to his invitation to come to America. She decided to bring her best friend along, and that best friend was Marie Schuff. Four years later, John and Marie were married. They had five children, only two of whom survived—Hermine Mathews and her sister Irene.

The Mullers’ experiences in the New World make for fascinating reading. John died in 1964 when he was 86. Little did he know that his true legacy was to be written by his daughter several decades later when she established a scholarship in her parents’ names. In a letter to CLU Hermine wrote: “. . . the happiest people in this venture would have been my wonderful parents and my devoted husband, all of whom had a profound influence upon my life.”

The Marie and John Muller Memorial Scholarship is designated for pre-seminary students preparing for a teaching or preaching ministry. Hermine did allow one exception, however—that the scholarship may be given to students preparing for other church vocations.