Richard Lugner married his girlfriend 50 years younger just 2 months ago.
He died on August 12, 2024 in his villa in Vienna Richard Lugner Austrian billionaire businessman – it says Agence France-Presse. Lugner was known to many for inviting the hottest A-list stars to the Vienna Opera Ball, but his life story hides much more exciting and interesting details than this little colorful one. According to the news agency, Lugner struggled with several health problems and underwent surgery in recent months.
But this could not prevent him from getting married for the sixth time on June 1 and marrying his girlfriend, who is about 50 years younger than him,
the 42-year-old Simone Reiländert. “This will be my last marriage,” the man predicted a few weeks ago at the Vienna City Hall. (For the record: Christine Gmeiner from 1961 to 1978, Cornelia Laufersweiler from 1979 to 1983, Susanne Dietrich from 1984 to 1989, Christina Lugner from 1990 to 2007, and Cathy Schmitz from 2014 to 2016 were Playboy models. his wife.)
They got together with Simone Reiländer in July 2021 and even got engaged in October of that year. However, they broke up in December, and in June 2024 they reconciled and got married. The storms of Lugner’s love life may also have been fueled by the fact that he allegedly often sought dating advice from an astrologer named Gerda Rogers. But that was not the only reason why the late billionaire was a divisive figure.
Life of Richard Lugner
Richard Lugner was born on October 11, 1932 in Vienna, the son of lawyer Richard Lugner Sr. and his wife Leopoldine. In 1943, when little Richard was only 11 years old, his father was taken prisoner of war in Russia and never returned home. The boy then graduated from the technical university’s architecture course in 1953, and later worked on the construction of gas stations and building renovations. His career soon began to soar, which lasted until the end of his life – with the exception of a few letters.
The construction of the Vienna Islamic Center in 1979 and the renovation of the Stadttempel (Vienna’s main synagogue) in 1988 are also attributed to Richard Lugner. In 1990, he opened his own shopping center, Lugner City,
which was the seventh largest shopping center in Austria at the time. In 1997, he left the management of his huge construction company to his two sons (by Christine Gmeiner) – but he remained the owner. In September 2005, he further expanded his empire: he opened the Lugner Cinema with 13 rooms and a total of 1,840 seats.
He was a star in his own right
As a returning guest of the prestigious Viennese Opera Ball, he brought such celebrities to the event (in addition to his current wife) as Harry Belafonte, Sophia Loren, Grace JonesRaquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Farrah Fawcett, Claudia Cardinale, Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra, Paris Hilton, Dita Von Teese, Gina Lollobrigida, Kim Kardashian, Brooke Shields, Goldie Hawn, Melanie Griffith, Elle Macpherson, Ornella Muti, Jane Fonda – és végül, 2024-ben Priscilla Presley.
The only star who could resist the persistent siege was Elizabeth Taylor.
But Richard Lugner himself was at least as well-known in Austrian pop culture as the Hollywood celebrities just listed. In October 2019, for example, he received his own wax statue at the Madame Tussauds museum in Vienna. This was certainly due to his numerous TV appearances, for example he had his own reality show in the 2000s: the American The Osbournes modeled after him The Lugnersin which viewers could follow the daily lives of Richard and Christina Lugner and their daughter, Jacqueline, and Richard’s mother-in-law, Martha Haidinger.
Politician? Scandal hero? Businessman!
But Lugner was not only interested in show business, but also in politics. He ran twice in the Austrian presidential election – as an independent candidate. In 1998, he came fourth out of five candidates (he got 9.91% of the votes), and then he ran with his own party in the 1999 parliamentary elections, but they managed to get only 1.02% of the votes.
However, all of this was enough for more than 90% of Austrians to know the name Lugner by the end of the millennium (according to surveys).
In the midst of the extreme attention, of course, it was possible that some scandals were mixed around his figure. First, he was accused of being a Scientology sympathizer because he rented out one of his properties to the church for a week in 2002, and then in February 2007 he pulled the plug on the conservatives by renting out a room to a medical center dealing with abortion.
However, the attacks on him did not discourage him from appearing in public at all. In the 2016 presidential election, he was able to run again (because he obtained the necessary 6,000 signatures) and in the first round he won 2.26% of the votes. Years later, he did not shy away from making a political statement. In March 2022 (a few days after the outbreak of the Ukrainian-Russian war), for example
in a TV interview, he said that the president of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), Herbert Kickl, “should be sent to Ukraine to be shot.”
This statement, of course, caught many off guard – just as it did not help his reputation that, although he himself did not smoke, he opposed the banning of smoking in restaurants.
His health problems, his death and his memory
In 2016, at the age of 84, he was first diagnosed with cancer, which then attacked his prostate. As a result, he received radiation therapy for several months, and was declared cured in the spring of 2017.
Not much later, however, in 2020, cancer attacked him again, this time in his skin.
After the operation at that time, he was found to be cancer-free again, but in 2021 the disease returned again and he was operated on again. In July 2024, at the age of 91, he needed emergency surgery for one of his heart valves – and died a few weeks later.
“Our engineer, Richard Lugner, our Mortar and, above all, our beloved boss, unfortunately left us today,” read a touching post by Lugner City employees. “We can hardly put into words the grief we feel.” Our pain is indescribably great, but we would rather remember the good times we spent together. With tears and laughter, we say goodbye to the great Richard Lugner, who will remain in our hearts forever!”
There were several comments under the video, the authors of which told how great their boss the deceased was at the time. “I worked at his cinema for two years and he was the best boss I ever had,” wrote one mourner. “He was a real gentleman, a great person!”
“He was a great person, I got to meet him in person in Lugner City,” someone else wrote. “He was always smiling!”
“The city of Vienna has become poorer,” added another commenter. But the country’s chancellor, Karl Nehammer, also paid his respects on his official X page (that is, on Twitter). “Richard Lugner was a successful entrepreneur and a dazzling individual. A real, original Austrian figure who never lied to himself. Rest in peace!” he wrote. The mogul is also mourned by his four children: Jacqueline, Nadine, Alexander and Andreas.
