Born in
Koszalin, Ruhnke was appointed in Kiel where he gained his
doctorate in 1954 with a thesis on
Joachim Burmeister's
music theory. Afterwards he was
Wissenschaftlicher Assistent at the
Free University of Berlin and
habilitatetd in 1961. In 1964 he was appointed to the chair of musicology at the
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, which he held until he became
emeritus in 1986. From 1968 to 1974 Ruhnke was president of the
Gesellschaft für Musikforschung and from 1991 to 1997 president of the
International Telemann Society. From 1960 to 2003 he was responsible for the Telemann edition of the
Zentrum für Telemann-Pflege und -Forschung Magdeburg. In 1984, 1992 and 1999 his three-volume
Telemann-Werke-Verzeichnis was published, in which he completed the
Telemann-Vokalwerke-Verzeichnis by Werner Menke (1982/1983) with the instrumental works. Ruhnke "influenced [...] Telemann research as a whole, which he introduced into academic discourse and for which he set important standards" (Ute Poetzsch). In 1995 he received the
Georg-Philipp-Telemann-Preis der Landeshauptstadt Magdeburg. He also studied the music history of his home
Pomerania and became a member of the . == References ==