Born in
Gifhorn on 28 July 1955, the son of a dean, Baltruweit studied Protestant theology. He was pastor of the Lutheran parish Stephanus in
Berenbostel from 1984. In 1992 he became head of studies at the seminary in
Loccum. He worked at the of the
Expo 2000 in Hanover from 1998 and 2001, where he was responsible for the programs. He worked from 2001 for publicity of the
Landeskirche Hannovers. From 2004 he worked also at the Protestant centre for services and church music at
St. Michael in Hildesheim of the Landeskirche Hannovers. He worked also in the ministry in vacation. He retired in November 2020.
Kirchentag and ecumenism Baltruweit worked for the
Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag. He worked also for the
Lutheran World Federation and the
World Council of Churches. He founded a band for his music in 1977, the Studiogruppe Baltruweit. He was a member of the ecumenic authors' societies, later named
TAKT. In 2003 he played for 200,000 listeners at the final open-air service of the Ecumenic Kirchentag in Berlin. He retired from Kirchentag during the 2025 Kirchentag in Hanover with a concert at the
Marktkirche, after taking part in 30 events as musician and as participant. Baltruweit composed more than thousand new songs. Several of them were included in the Protestant
Evangelisches Gesangbuch (EG) and the Catholic
Gotteslob (GL) and other hymnals. He wrote also the texts for about half of his songs. == Compositions ==