Never up for debate

Widow Simone Lugner does not want to give up her surname

There is much speculation about Simone Lugner.(Bild: Andreas Tischler)

Much is being speculated and written about Simone Lugner. But the widow of legendary Viennese entrepreneur Richard Lugner has now denied one thing. She does not want to drop her surname. 

As the 42-year-old, who only had 72 days with Richard Lugner as his wife, makes clear in a post on her Instagram stories, suggestions that she wants to drop her surname are false.

"That was never an option for me," she writes. I didn't think about it at any point." Postscript: "You can relax again."

In her wedding dress at the grave
Simone was called Reiländer before her marriage to Lugner on July 1, 2024 and then took her husband's surname in the traditional way. Lugner died on August 12. He recently suffered from health problems and even had to undergo heart surgery. 

In addition to a honeymoon in Greece, the couple had big plans for a kind of second wedding in St. Stephen's Cathedral. The day after Lugner's 92nd birthday, on October 11, they were to be blessed in the famous church. Instead, the widow mourned at his grave that day in her wedding dress. 

Sixth and "last wife"
His widow was his sixth and, as he himself had always said, "last wife". Before the wedding, he had raved that he had only loved three women in his life. "Apart from Simone - only Christine and Christina."

Christine Gmeiner was Lugner's first wife and mother of his sons, Christina "Mausi" Lugner made the social scene unsafe with him for years and is the mother of daughter and heiress Jacqueline. She has also kept the surname, as has Lugner's German ex-wife Cathy.