In addition to his successful construction empire and the annual press visits to the Vienna Opera Ball, Richard Lugner (91) is a favorite of the Austrian tabloid press, especially because of his numerous relationships. But there isn’t much to report at the moment: the construction lion is single. “Unfortunately I can’t find a new suitable partner,” explains the 91-year-old in an interview with “Spiegel”.
There is no shortage of women who “absolutely want him,” says Lugner. It’s more because of the stars that the Austrian is currently traveling solo. “When the newspapers write that I’m looking for a girlfriend, I always get letters. I then ask the Austrian star astrologer Gerda Rogers – and what she says, I rely on,” says Lugner. It is also due to astrological circumstances that Richard Lugner likes to be with beautiful women: “My star sign is Libra, and Libra people love the beautiful things in life.”
Bees, zebras, goldfish, hummingbirds, cats, Bambi, beetles, bunnies: the list of Lugner’s exes is long and reads like the register of a pet store. The Austrian likes to give his women animal nicknames. “Feminism is not my thing,” he admits in the interview.
Lugner admits that he also owes his career to the women in his life. “My first wife was very involved in the company. She was also the only one I ever approached. I was in love, no one else interested me,” says Lugner. He was married to his first wife Christine, his childhood sweetheart, from 1961 to 1988. She persuaded him to become self-employed and found his own construction company – the starting signal for his successful career. After the separation, they remained professionally connected.
And that’s not all: it was his mother who registered him to study structural engineering against his will, and an employee convinced him of the concept for his now successful Lugner City shopping center.
Richard Lugner founded his company in 1962 and opened the Lugner City shopping center in 1990. The construction genius is proud of his career: “We have only carried out great buildings, I built the first mosque in Vienna, that was my big leap.” The 91-year-old is hardly bothered by the fact that he gets attention mainly because of his girlfriends. Lugner even enjoys this attention on himself – to a certain extent: “It gets tiring when they want to take selfies. At the Oktoberfest in Munich I took 400 photos in two hours. That’s not funny, it’s annoying.”
