[schoen]

I find the suggestion surprising myself, given how Germanic the German term sounds to me, but I decided to check in Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache for the etymology of German "Stoff".

Kluge says that it came from Middle Dutch "stoffe", which got it from Old French "estoffe", which had a sense of 'cloth, mesh, fabric (especially of silk)'. He says the word's "economic background" is the importation of silkworms and silk weaving from Byzantium ("where Justinian had brought them in 552 from the Orient") via Sicily and North Italy to France and Flanders, and that the "assumed" etymology of the word in Greek στυφειν can thus be "supported on grounds of cultural history".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_silk#Spread_of_prod...

But other etymological dictionaries say that the origin of the Old French term is uncertain and may not come from Greek.

[king_phil]

As a german I can say that "Stoff" has different meanings. It can be used like cloth, but in other contexts it is used like material. For example there is "Stoffkunde" which it the study (Kunde) of materials (Stoffe). "Lesestoff" is reading (lesen) material.