Cross-cultural pragmatics, as well as the subject of politeness research and the study of requests specifically are areas of research that offer an overwhelming amount of studies, theoretical concepts and models. Since the research in this discipline progressed significantly in the later years of the last century, comprehensive research has been done on the subject to the present day. In their own recent work on politeness, Erhardt and Neuland even deem it almost impossible to achieve comprehensive understanding of the subject and refer to other introductions on politeness beginning with the remark that politeness research has become an incomprehensible field of study (2021: 9). In this chapter, I will attempt to provide an overview of literature relevant to the specific reserach aims of this study, i.e. cross-cultural studies on the perception and production of politeness in certain Head act strategies by L1-speakers of English and German.