List of Famous people who died at 81

Jürgen Hubbert was a German mechanical engineer and manager. From 16 December 1998 to 6 April 2005 he was a member of the Board of Management of what was then DaimlerChrysler AG and in this function was responsible for the Mercedes Car Group (MCG).

Irène Tharin was a French politician who served as Member of Parliament for Doubs's 4th constituency from 2002 to 2007.

Irving Asher (1903–1985) was an American film producer. Born in San Francisco in September 1903, he began his film production career in Hollywood in 1919. After joining the staff of Warner Brothers he was sent over to England as the managing director of their subsidiary Teddington Studios in Middlesex in the mid 1930s. Flynn played his first significant part as the lead in the now-lost Murder at Monte Carlo (1935), which was produced by Asher. Asher went on to join Alexander Korda's London Film Productions where he worked on the epic The Four Feathers (1939). Subsequently he returned to Hollywood to work as a producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he earned his only Academy Award nomination for the 1941 Greer Garson film Blossoms in the Dust.

Josef Kaiser was an East German urban architect associated, in particular, with a number of the country's more high-profile building projects during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1946, following serious illness, he embarked on a career as an operatic tenor: five years later he returned to architecture.