Object has "against" in it, that's the ob- part. The other part is "throw". The German comes from the Latin. (Why did they go for -stand instead of a word for throw?)
For instance: circumstance => Umstand, or depend => abhängen, or expression => Ausdruck, or participate => teilnehmen.
German looks unfamiliar for English speakers mostly because all the words that English has borrowed as such from French or from classical languages have been translated into compound German words.
The Latin objectum has a directional vector (figuratively, it's thrown at us), while Gegenstand is much more inert. It's like a world view of active exploration versus a tableau of the world around us.
The directly-recognizable ones are usually "learned borrowings", because Germans have been very enthusiastic about learning Latin as scholars for a long time, and often consciously chosen to use Latin (or Greek) words.
Gegenstand is in the middle of the page: "lat. obiectum", it says - "translation of Latin obiectum into philosopher-speak".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:German_terms_calqued...
A nice example (of many!) is überleben, calqued from supervivere (literally, to over-live).