List of Famous people who died in 1988

Alain Savary was a French Socialist politician, deputy to the National Assembly of France during the Fourth and Fifth Republic, chairman of the Socialist Party (PS) and a government minister in the 1950s and in 1981–1984, when he was appointed by President François Mitterrand as Minister of National Education.

Wera Engels was a German actress. After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, she was invited to Hollywood. Producers saw her as a cheap alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.

André Neher was a French Jewish scholar and philosopher.

Helmut Friedbert Richard Siegfried Echternach was a German Lutheran theologian and pastor, and one of the leaders of the Lutheran High Church Movement in Germany.

Otto Pächt was an Austrian art historian and one of the representatives of the second wave of the Vienna School of Art History. He mostly wrote on the medieval and Renaissance art of Europe. An exile from the Nazis, he taught in England and United States, before returning to Austria in 1963.

Vasil Pavlovich Mzhavanadze was a Georgian Soviet politician who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Georgian SSR from September 1953 to September 28, 1972 and a member of the CPSU's Politburo from June 29, 1957 to December 18, 1972. Dismissed after a corruption scandal, he was replaced by Eduard Shevardnadze.

Arnulfo Arias Madrid was a Panamanian politician, doctor, and writer who served as the President of Panama from 1940 to 1941, again from 1949 to 1951, and finally for 11 days in October 1968. Throughout his adult life he had warned about the increasing influence of the military in Panamanian politics. He vowed to reduce its influence. In turn he was denied his presidential electoral success in 1948 by the military. He was removed from his duly elected presidency three times by military coups.

Willem Rogier van Otterloo was a Dutch composer and conductor.