Police said the giant male cat, called Altai, appears to have walked through a gate which was not shut properly at Cologne Zoo.
It got into an adjacent storage building, and mauled the 43-year-old keeper, who later died of her wounds in hospital.
The zoo's director Theo Pagel told how he used a rifle to shoot the four-year-old Siberian tiger through the building's skylight before it could make its way to the visitor areas.
"Today is surely the most terrible day in my career. We have lost a keeper today who was attacked by our male tiger," he added.
"As it appears, it was a question of inadvertence. Out of respect for the family, we will not name the person.
"I was not at the zoo at the time, and I only came later and shot and killed the animal so that we could enter the enclosure and take a look.
"But the employee was already dead."
Police said it was unlikely that members of the public had witnessed the attack which happened at noon on Saturday.
Officers briefly cleared the area, but the zoo later reopened for visitors.
Cologne Zoo was founded in 1860, and is one of the oldest and best-known zoos in the country. It is home to some 10,000 animals from 700 species.
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