this time, the population was actually somewhere between 200 and 250 inhabitants in the town. Thereafter, the town's population climbed continuously, a trend interrupted only by the Second World War. There were three great surges in the population growth. The first came in the late 19th century, especially in the 1890s while the textile industry boom due to the Industrial Revolution was luring workers to Schüttorf. After the Second World War came the second wave of immigration when roughly 2,600 refugees driven out of Germany's former eastern territories reached Schüttorf. Towards the end of the 1990s, the population once again rose sharply owing mainly to locally favourable building land prices. History Schüttorf's town hall was struck by an aerial bomb in 1945 in the Second World War's last days and was completely gutted. The fire also destroyed the town archive and many valuable historical documents, making research into Schüttorf's history very difficult. Many things, however, have been reconstructed since then. Etymology The etymology of the name Schüttorf is not exactly known and various folk explanations have been put forth, the most widespread of which is the legend that tells of the river Vechte being diverted around the town as early as 1295 by building a dam. The workers on this project are said to have dumped out the contents of their pushcarts on the command Schütt’t d’r up. This legend, however, only explains the sound of one of the town's modern names (the Low German name Schüttrupp). The earliest forms of the name Schüttorf were Scuhtthorp, Scutorpe, Scuttorpe and Scotdorpe in documents from 1154. On a coin issue from the first half of the 13th century is the form SCOTOR(p)E. Hermann Abels (see 2) is of the opinion that the name's origin is the Dutch word schut (limber wall, dam, sluice), which comes close to the folk meaning. Historically, however, it comes up short, as it assumes that the Vechte was already dammed at the time the placename arose, and it leaves unexplained all forms in Scot-, which must be derived from the Low German Schott (“dividing wall in a stall”). Another explanation has the name coming from the Vechteschuten, barges (Schuten) being the flat-bottomed boats with a very small draught that were used for shipping Bentheim sandstone. The Vechte is navigable by barge as far up as Schüttorf, and it is known that the stone was loaded here. This