Coffin ride, dark red gravestone and burial with opera ball top hat: construction mogul Richard Lugner lets it all out at the funeral he planned himself. An era is also being laid to rest.
Wonderfully quirky: Richard Lugner married Playboy model Cathy Schmitz in 2014 – his fifth wife.
Monika Fellner / Getty
He was a construction mogul, a buffoon, a presidential candidate with right-wing leanings, and he liked to adorn himself with young women. Richard Lugner’s similarities to a certain US politician were unmistakable. But he never became an Alpine Trump. “Mortar,” as the builder, who died on August 12 at the age of 91, called himself, was harmless. Now Austria is mourning the loss of a quirky original.
St. Stephen’s Cathedral will be packed for the memorial service on August 31. Representatives of all political parties have announced that they will be there. With Lugner, an era is being laid to rest in Austria. He ran unsuccessfully for Federal President twice. Lugner complained a little about too much immigration. But he lacked the doggedness of other right-wing populists; resentment was foreign to him. In the end, everything Lugner said was just insults – and staged.
And at his funeral, “Mörtel” wants to really let it all out. He wrote the script for the farewell ceremony himself. After the memorial service in the cathedral, a motorcade with his coffin will drive past Lugner’s places of work, such as the State Opera. He would drive there every year in a top hat and tails, accompanied by Hollywood stars such as Grace Jones, Claudia Cardinale and Kim Kardashian. The fact that they were paid princely sums was irrelevant. “Mörtel’s” accompaniment gave the baroque parade of the upper 10,000 in Austria a little international flair.
This is another reason why the opera was a must on his final journey. Nor was Lugner City, the shopping center in the suburbs named after him. Until the end, he mingled with people there almost every day. Some of the shops were named after his six wives, whom he called Mausi, Katzi or Bambi.
Only then will he continue to his final resting place in the fashionable Döbling. The crypt is already there, but the gravestone still has to be made. Lugner decided just before his death what it should look like: dark red like Lugner City. And Lugner’s stage directions also stipulate something else: his Opera Ball top hat should be buried with him. However, only in a small setting, surrounded by his closest relatives. The showman wanted discretion for the very last act.
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