Richard Lugner



Richard "Mörtel" Lugner (born 11 October 1932, First Austrian Republic) is an Austrian entrepreneur in the construction industry, a Viennese society figure, and a former political candidate not affiliated with any of the Austrian political parties.

Early life and family
Richard Lugner is the son of the lawyer Richard Lugner senior and his wife Leopoldine. His father went missing in 1943 after becoming a prisoner of war in Russia during WWII.

After completing his general school education, Lugner graduated from the Federal Technical and Commercial College specializing in building construction in 1953.

Business career
Lugner spent the first few years of his professional career working for a Viennese construction company and then moved to the construction department of the mineral oil company Mobil Oil Austria. Born in Vienna, Lugner got a licence to work as a building contractor (Baumeisterkonzession) in 1962 and at first specialized in the erection of filling stations and the renovation of old buildings. His company started to prosper, and he eventually became known to a wider public with the completion, in 1979, of Vienna's first mosque, the Vienna Islamic Centre, situated on the banks of the river Danube. While the majority of the competition at this time was striving for the numerous large contracts of the reconstruction period and economic expansion, Lugner was able to assert himself with his company with relatively small contracts. He also became known for the 1988 renovation of the Stadttempel, Vienna's main synagogue. From 1997, Lugner gradually withdrew from the operative construction business and handed over the management of the construction company, which remained 100% owned by him, to his sons.

Lugner City
In 1990, Lugner opened his own shopping mall, Lugner City, the seventh largest shopping center in Austria at the time. Lugner City was opened in a working class district of Vienna and, from the start, Lugner aggressively advertised his business by regularly inviting celebrities—starting with Thomas Gottschalk—who would perform there and sign autographs—a marketing strategy not very common in a city that, back then, hardly had any shopping malls. Through his shopping mall, Lugner was one of a small group of businesspeople who helped change Austrians' shopping habits by pushing to the limits the various regulations concerning opening hours. In a city where shops generally closed at 6 p.m. Mondays to Fridays and at noon on Saturdays to remain closed for more than one and a half days until Monday morning, Lugner strongly advocated late night shopping on at least one weekday and an extension of shopping hours to Saturday afternoon, even when that meant raising the trades unions' opposition. Together with his lawyer Adrian Hollaender, Lugner tried several times to overturn the restrictions on store opening hours for Lugner City. He opposed the smoking ban in restaurants, even though he was a non-smoker himself. In 2003, Lugner City was transferred to Volksbanken-Immoconsult by means of a leaseback arrangement. Ten years later, the repurchase took place at the earliest possible contractual date by way of a share deal.

In September 2005, the Lugner Kino opened, a multiplex cinema with 13 auditoriums offering space for 1840 visitors.

Since 2007, a jury at an annual casting in Lugner City chooses an "Opera Ball Princess".

Vienna Opera Ball
In 1992, Mörtel Lugner and Mausi Lugner (his former wife Christina) brought Harry Belafonte to Lugner City, and also took him along to the Vienna Opera Ball. From that time on, the couple have each year paid a celebrity to visit the shopping centre and then accompany them as their guest to that prestigious function at the Vienna State Opera, an "invitation" which has often been criticised or just belittled for being a nouveau riche idea. The only star Lugner was unable to have as his guest, despite several attempts, was Liz Taylor. In November 2023, Lugner stated he would be leaving the decisions on future guests to his daughter Jacqueline.

List of guests of the Vienna Opera Ball

Political ambitions
In the late 1990s, Lugner handed over his business to his two grown-up sons by an earlier marriage, Alexander and Andreas Lugner, and went into politics. In the 1998 presidential elections, he finished fourth in a field of five candidates, receiving 9.91 percent of the popular vote; incumbent Federal President Thomas Klestil, who had been running for a second term of office, received 63.4%. For the parliamentary elections that took place the following year, the Lugners organised a separate platform called Die Unabhängigen ("The Independents") but, as they only received 1.02 per cent of the vote, did not get any seats in the Nationalrat. Nevertheless, at the end of the millennium, a survey found that more than 90 per cent of Austrians recognized the name Lugner. For the 2016 presidential election he announced to collect the necessary signatures in order to participate. He received 6,000 support votes in time to be admitted to the election and received 2.26% in the first round.

Media appearances
Die Lugners ("The Lugners") was a reality TV show that first aired in 2003, produced by private television broadcaster ATV which showed Richard and Christina Lugner, their daughter Jacqueline, and Richard Lugner's mother-in-law, Martha Haidinger, at home, at work and on holiday. It was modeled on the US series The Osbournes.

Lugner appeared weekly in the show Wir sind Kaiser, which has been broadcast since 2007. In 2010, he played the role of Mr. Buttler at the Karl May Festival in Gföhl. In 2016, he appeared with his then wife Cathy in the RTL II documentary soap "Lugner und Cathy - Der Millionär und das Bunny."

Controversies
In a public controversy in early February 2007, opponents of abortion criticized Lugner for renting out a space in Lugner City to the VenusMed sexual medicine center. This led to a public conflict with Auxiliary bishop Andreas Laun.

In 2002, Lugner made a property available to the Church of Scientology for one week for public relations work. In 2011, he wished the organization "all the best for the future" in an email to the president of the Austrian L. Ron Hubbard Foundation, which was criticized as Scientology sympathy.

In March 2022, a few days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lugner told the Puls 4 channel in an interview about FPÖ party leader Herbert Kickl, "they should send him to Ukraine sometime so they can shoot him."

Personal life
Lugner has four children: His two sons, Alexander and Andreas Lugner, are from his first marriage from 1961 until 1978 with Christine Gmeiner. He has another child, Nadin, with actress Sonja Jeannine. His youngest child, daughter Jacqueline (born 1993), is from his fourth marriage with Christina Lugner. The couple divorced in 2007.

In September 2014, Lugner (aged 81) married German Playboy model Cathy Schmitz (aged 24) at a ceremony held at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. Schmitz was a Playboy Bunny at the Playboy Club in Cologne before being the cover model of German Playboy in 2013. This was Lugner's fifth marriage. They divorced in 2016.

In October 2019, Lugner unveiled his wax statue at the Madame Tussauds wax museum in Vienna.

In 2016, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which he declared defeated after several months of radiotherapy in spring 2017. After he injured himself during a vacation in the Maldives in 2020, he was diagnosed with skin cancer. He subsequently underwent surgery and was found to be cancer-free. The disease returned in 2021, which resulted in another operation.

He was given the nickname "Mörtel" by Austrian tabloid journalist Michael Jeannée.