Background and career
Richard Siegfried "Mörtel" Lugner (11 October 1932 – 12 August 2024) was an Austrian businessman in the construction industry, a Viennese society figure, and an independent politician. He was known for constructing Vienna’s first mosque and renovating the city’s main synagogue. He also opened Lugner City, a prominent shopping mall, and became famous for inviting celebrities to the Vienna Opera Ball.
Richard Lugner was born in Vienna, the son of lawyer Richard Lugner Sr. and his wife Leopoldine. His father went missing in 1943 after becoming a prisoner of war in Russia during World War II. After completing his general school education, Lugner graduated from the Federal Technical and Commercial College specializing in building construction in 1953.
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. Lugner got a licence to work as a building contractor (Baumeisterkonzession) in 1962 and at first specialized in the building 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 1979 completion of Vienna's first mosque, the Vienna Islamic Centre, situated on the banks of the river Danube. While the majority of his 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.
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 had hardly 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 from noon on Saturdays 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, he opened the Lugner Kino, 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".
In 1992, Mörtel and Mausi Lugner (his then wife Christina), brought Harry Belafonte to Lugner City, and also took him along to the Vienna Opera Ball. Each year thereafter, the couple would pay a celebrity to visit the shopping centre and then accompany them as their guest to the ball. 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.
In the late 1990s, Lugner handed over his business to his two grown sons from 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% 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% 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% of Austrians recognized the name Lugner. For the 2016 presidential election he announced his intention to collect the necessary signatures in order to participate. He received 6,000 supporting votes in time to be admitted to the election and received 2.26% in the first round.
