Since the first local protests against initiatives to explore new sites for hydraulic fracturing in some German states emerged in 2010, the controversies around this new energy technology developed in Germany to form an encompassing and differentiated conflict field. Contestation around fracking now extends to multiple societal sectors, scientific disciplines and political communities connecting various discourses related to energy provision, economic welfare, technological risk, health and the environment. Moreover, issues related to fracking became part of a broader conflict landscape around the energy transition proclaimed by the German government. In the campaigns before the federal election in September 2012, most of the major political parties had responded to the critical reactions that their candidates had experienced in the electorate around prospective sites of new drilling initiatives. With the second Grand Coalition in power on the federal level, the future of fracking in Germany is highly uncertain as its meaning for different policy fields is now reinterpreted in the context of different strategies proposed for the proclaimed energy transition. In our paper, we shall interpret and reconstruct the different storylines that can be detected in the recent controversies around fracking in the changing context of the proclaimed, but contested energy transition in Germany.