Richard Lugner

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Richard and Christina Lugner during a press conference

Richard Lugner (born October 11, 1932) is a successful Austrian entrepreneur in the construction industry, a Viennese society figure, and a former political candidate not affiliated with any of the Austrian political parties. Lugner has been nicknamed Mörtel ("Mortar", as in masonry) by the media, while his fourth wife, Christina (born June 2, 1968), is generally known as Mausi ("Little Mouse").

1 Business career
2 Political ambitions
3 Trivia
4 Note on the spelling
5 External links

[edit] Business career

Born in Vienna, Lugner got a licence to work as a building contractor (Baumeisterkonzession) in 1962 and at first specialised 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, situated on the banks of the river Danube. In 1990 he opened his own shopping mall, Lugner City, in a working class district of Vienna and, from the start, 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.

In 1992 Mörtel and Mausi Lugner 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. However, media attention has continually been rising, also abroad, so that today any official guests of honour are usually neglected compared to the Lugners' celebrities, who invariably have a sex bomb image:

1993	Joan Collins
1994	Ivana Trump
1995	Sophia Loren
1996	Grace Jones
1997	Sarah, Duchess of York
1998	Raquel Welch (although it was rumoured that Lugner had tried to persuade Monica Lewinsky to come to Vienna)
1999	Faye Dunaway
2000	Jacqueline Bisset and Nadja Abdel Farrag
2001	Farrah Fawcett
2002	Claudia Cardinale
2003	Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock
2004	Andie MacDowell
2005	Geri Halliwell
2006	Carmen Electra

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.

[edit] Political ambitions

In the late 1990s Richard 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, where he was one of five candidates, he received an astonishing 9.91 per cent of the popular vote but was beaten by incumbent Federal President Thomas Klestil, who had been running for a second term of office. 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.

[edit] Trivia

The cover of Christina Lugner's 2004 book

Die Lugners ("The Lugners") was a reality TV show produced by a private television broadcaster which showed Richard and Christina Lugner, their daughter, Jacqueline (born 1993), and Richard Lugner's mother-in-law, Martha Haidinger, at home, at work, and on holiday.

Christina Lugner has co-written a book, Fit für die Society. Wie Frauen sich erfolgreich machen ("Fit for Society. How Women Make Themselves Successful", 2004) (ISBN 3-7015-0473-3), in which she advises career women on questions of etiquette.

Richard Lugner's third wife died after complications while undergoing plastic surgery. In spite of that, in 2004, on his wife's advice, Lugner himself had his eyelids treated with botulin toxin "to look like George Clooney".