Robert Mundheim

Early life and education Mundheim was born in Hamburg, Germany, to Alfred and Cecile (Cohn) Mundheim, and emigrated to the United States with his mother and brother in January 1939. He earned his B.A., magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1954, and a LL.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1957. From 1961 to 1962 he was in the US Air Force and served in Berlin. From 1962-63, he was special counsel to the Securities and Exchange Commission. and served three of those years as general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department (1977–80).

Mundheim became co-chairman of the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in 1992, but he soon left for Salomon, Inc., where he worked as general counsel from 1992 to 1997 and shifted to the same role for Salomon Smith Barney Holdings from 1997 to 1998. The university awarded him an honorary M.A. in 1971. He has served as a director of Commerce Clearing House, Inc. (1980-1996), First Pennsylvania Bank (1980-1990), CoreStates Bank N.A. (1990-1992), Benjamin Moore & Co. (1997-2001), eCollege, Inc. (2000-2007), and Hypo Real Estate.

Mundheim was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2007. He received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from The New School in 2019.